PED Testing For AMA Motocross

Lemme guess,
you were a Lance Armstrong fan?

Could it be that Valerie Adams is the only clean winner of the women's Olympic shot-put? And, could it be that she is the best natural female shot-putter there ever was?

She certainly isn't the longest. Her throws are not even in the vicinity. Her lifetime best throw of 21.24m sits in 185th place on the all-time list.

But analysis reveals a history of biological engineering and an illogical attempt to demonstrate through Olympic medals that eastern communism was superior to western democracy.

View shot-put's dark history - why drug-free athletes struggle to compete.

https://zen.nzherald.co.nz/media/webcontent/document/pdf/201233/SHOTPUT…

All of the throws above Adams' on the list were by athletes from the east, except a handful by throwers from China and Germany. And all bar three of the throws are from the steroids-soaked 1970s and 1980s.



The three exceptions the 79th, 130th and 143rd longest throws are from the last few weeks and were by Nadzeya Ostapchuk of Belarus.

The last of those three throws was the 21.36m Ostapchuk heaved in London to blitz Adams and the rest and claim the Olympic gold medal, since officially stripped from her following positive tests on consecutive days to an old-style anabolic steroid. In the week since, the Belarusian has denied doping and, without providing evidence, claimed her former coach had framed her and that Adams had doped in the past.

In examining the questions at the head of this story, we need to make some assumptions. The first is that Adams is clean.

There is no suspicion she isn't, despite Ostapchuk's slur.

But because of the history of the shot-put and her status as Olympic and world champion she is targeted by Drug Free Sport New Zealand.

Its director Graeme Steel confirmed she had never failed a test. Adams has said she provided 16 samples in the past year.

She speaks out against doping, having been robbed of a place in the final eight at her first Olympics (Athens, 2004), aged 19, when the Russian winner turned out to be on the steroid stanozolol.

Assumption number two is that the winning eastern bloc shot-putters of the 1970s and 1980s were on steroids. Though anecdotal, the evidence is overwhelming.

The clearest insight into the period comes from documents left in the offices of the Stasi, East German's secret police, after the Berlin Wall fell in 1989. Drugs, dates, doses, side-effects were all detailed.

The programme began in the late 1960s with athletes of each sex and as young as 10. It met immediate success. The country of 17 million collected nine golds at the 1968 Olympics, 20 four years later and in 1976 doubled it again to 40.

Its IOC-approved laboratory in Dresden checked to ensure the drugs could not be detected before athletes left for competition abroad. A few were caught, however, including the shot-putter who still holds the Olympic record, Ilona Slupianek. She was banned for a year in 1977, three years before she set the Olympic mark with a distance that even a doped Ostapchuk was more than a metre shy of 32 years later. Even more remarkable is that Slupianek reportedly weighed 93kg, compared to Adams' 120kg.

The side-effects of loading young women with male steroids was severe.

There have been trials, convictions, apologies. Heidi Krieger, unwittingly doped from the age of 16, eventually had sex-change surgery. He is now known as Andreas Krieger and is married to a former swimmer from the same doping programme.

The first game-changer came with the fall of the wall and revelation of the state-run doping programme. Improved methods of detecting steroids and the introduction of out-of-competition testing followed. Distances fell. The world record (22.63m, compared to Adams' best of 21.24m) was set in 1988. Only four throws from the 1990s make the top 200 on the all-time list, and one of those was in 1998 by a Ukrainian who failed a drug test the next year.

Distances have risen in the new millennium but nothing near 22m and in that period, Adams is the only untainted Olympic champion.

The Belarussian who won in 2000 was banned three years later after a positive test to clenbuterol, the 2004 winner was disqualified after testing positive for stanozolol and now Ostapchuk has been found with another anabolic steroid, metenolone, in her system.

What is metenolone? Metenolone is an old-fashioned anabolic steroid found in the adrenal glands of pregnant domesticated cats and is used to treat anaemia. It is an androgen so-called because it develops male sexual characteristics and while it increases strength it also leads to a deeper voice, more hair and increased libido.

Because it is relatively easy to detect it is usually found in out-of-competition tests. It was seventh on the Wada list of anabolic steroids detected in 2010 with 40 instances, compared to 337 for stanozolol and 250 for nandrolone.

Ostapchuk has said she would have been a fool to take metenolone knowing she would be tested in London. Spikes in excretion of the drug, failure of a masking agent and human error are among possible explanations of why an athlete may be caught when they didn't expect to be.

"A lot of people take stuff and do stuff without knowing what is in it," the head of the World Anti-Doping Agency David Howman told the Herald. "They rely on others to say that this is safe or is not detectable."

Sometimes the doping chemist messes up, he said.

What benefit and how fast? Ostapchuk and Adams competed in Rome nine weeks before London. Adams threw 21.03m, Ostapchuk threw 19.58m. Ostapchuk then returned to Belarus. In Minsk in Belarus on July 18, she threw 21.58m, a 2m improvement in six weeks since Rome. So, what performance benefit might a steroid such as metenolone afford?

A paper published 1997 in the science journal Clinical Chemistry, reported a 9 per cent improvement in 10 weeks in an adult woman shot-putter in the East German doping programme after she was given daily doses of 10mg of the steroid Turinabol. In that time her throws improved from 17.0m to 19.5m.

The next year, when she was given three courses of the drug at higher doses, her performance improved 17 per cent and culminated in her beating the world record.

At the end of the third year (1970) on the doping programme the woman recorded a personal best of 22.22m which was 2m further than she had managed on 14 years of training without doping.

How trustworthy is Belarus? In its corruption ratings, Transparency International placed Belarus 143 of 183 nations, with a score of 2.4 out of 10 (New Zealand was ranked first with a score of 9.5).

Transparency International uses surveys and assessments regarding bribery of public officials, kickbacks in public procurement, embezzlement of public funds, and the effectiveness of anti-corruption efforts in determining its ratings.

The country's President, Alexander Lukashenko, has ruled for 20 years and is also head of Belarus's national olympic committee. He is often referred to as "the last dictator in Europe", following a violent crackdown on protests against a contested election in late 2010 and he was prevented from attending the Olympics because of an EU travel ban imposed, according to a UK government spokesman, "due to the part he played in the violations of international electoral standards".

Lukashenko had set a target of making the top 10 in the medal table at London (Belarus was 17th at Beijing). Despite its being a relatively poor country (its GDP is less than half New Zealand's) of 9.5 million people, the President said it could make a breakthrough in sport similar to that of China and South Korea.

The country paid each of its five Beijing gold medallists US$100,000 and in 2009 he announced that US$92.9 million ($114 million) would be provided for preparations for London.

Ostapchuk is said to have been tested three times in Belarus in the weeks before London, with all of them clear. The Belarus Anti-Doping Agency would have collected the samples and, as it doesn't have an IOC-accredited laboratory, sent them away for processing probably to Moscow.

This system also did not detect any anomalies (or if it did, did not report them) in the samples of two Belarusian hammer-throwers who were stripped of silver and bronze at the Beijing Olympics because of abnormal traces of testosterone.

They overturned the decision on appeal though the ruling stated that the verdict "should not be interpreted as an exoneration".

In May banned substances were found in the samples of one of the pair from the 2004 Olympics after it was retested. He was subsequently withdrawn from the London Olympics.

Ostapchuk is not the first female shot-putter from her country to win an Olympics and then be exposed as a drug cheat. Yanina Korolchik won in Sydney in 2000 but was banned three years later after testing positive to the anabolic steroid clenbuterol.

Belarus is "compliant" with the code of the World Anti-Doping Authority, meaning it has rules in place and appears to abide by them. But it is almost impossible to measure the quality of an agency or a laboratory, Howman told the Herald. "You can look at the quantity of [samples] analysed but that doesn't mean a lot either. Marion Jones [US track sprinter banned for systematic doping] never tested positive and she was tested more than 160 times."

The trajectories The pattern for an athlete who has not doped should show gradual and consistent improvement, with gains tailing off with age. The trajectory for Adams, 27, is consistent with this. Journalist Phil Gifford, who is writing Adams' biography, this week said Adams told him that the big improvements of her youth are long gone and the battle now is to eke out small gains. The graph for Ostapchuk, 31, is erratic by comparison which invites suspicion, but it was the dramatic improvement in the weeks leading to the Olympics that most raised eyebrows.

Is Adams the only clean Olympic women's shot put champion? Most likely, no. The 1984 Olympics were boycotted by eastern bloc countries and the winning distance was 2m short of that of the Olympics before and after, for example. And the event was won with a modest throw when it was introduced in 1948. The medallists then came from countries (France, Italy and Austria) that haven't figured since .

The first controversial figures were Ukrainian sisters Tamara and Irina Press (hurdles and pentathlon), who dominated the 1960 and 1964 Olympics and who critics said were men, hermaphrodite or had been injected with male hormones. Both sisters had left sport by the time gender verification was introduced in 1966.

But there is much to support a claim that Adams is the best natural shot-putter ever. She is clearly the best in the west and the best of her generation.

Her only rival has been Ostapchuk and now there is the smoking gun to lay beside suspicion.

Twenty-four women have thrown further than Adams in the history of the shot-put.

They came from Russia, East Germany, former Czechoslovakia, Bulgaria, Ukraine, Belarus, China and Germany.

The slur that Ostapchuk fired at Adams this week may be no more than the reaction of another cheat who cannot credit that the part-Polynesian girl from New Zealand is the real thing.

As for the PED's threads. . . The OP's anger is misdirected. . . I'm pretty sure we almost all agree that we don't want PED's in the sport. Some disagree that they're here and some are as headstrong as the OP that they are here. . . That doesn't change the fact that nobody here can do anything about it. . .

Why bother to test, the sport is clean, Vital forum members know everything in the world and say it's so.

Case closed.

Because for a sport like SX/MX , it's much easier for the promoters to to promote just 5 top riders than 40 riders.

Touchy subject for sure, right up there with cheater bikes, tear downs, claiming rights, rich dads, rough riding, GP vs AMA, moto dads, etc.etc. - These subjects never go away, only the names and dates change over the years.

I've said it before, i'll say it again' motocross fans are a naïve bunch.

If you don't think guys are doping when there's millions of dollars at stake you're very naïve

Not to mention any names , but I read that RC interview and he said a certain rider would do anything to win...

LEGALIZE IT!

Dont get me started!!!

AMEN!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Is that you Craig?..

With all the injuries these pro guys go through , doping should be allowed to some extent. How you think these guys return so fast from serious injuries? This is aint no stick and ball this is MX one of the most dangerous and physically demanding sport on the planet.

Why do you care? If they want to juice let them. Baseball needs to encourage PED's it might make the naps shorter. What a BORING freaking sport.

Ehh who cares.

All I know is baseball sure was exciting when Barry Bonds was hitting 70 homers.

Or, maybe some of us just think it's not our business to tell someone who is risking his life and limb to put on a show, how he should treat his body. Probably a lot of more important shit to worry about, just saying.

What testing program, for what, how much will it cost, and who will pay for it?

Any post that doesn't deal concretely with these essential questions is bullshit, regardless of whether people are naive or cynical about whether there is PED use in MX.

Yea, no big deal, not our busness. Even though its trickled into the amatuer ranks and kids as young as 13 are doing, yep, no biggie

Yeah, because teen wanna be bodybuilders and kids in other sports have never tried anything right? This is a new phenomena that is just now "trickling down" to kids in motocross?

A 13 year old can buy a bag of heroin or coke, doesn't mean he/she will... it's up to parents to educate their kids about these things, imo.

So because everyone is doing, its all good, got yea.

No need for clean sport with good role models.

That's not what I said at all.

FTE already nailed it. The testing doesn't work, and is too expensive to do anyway. So what are you left with, pure speculation and ignorance. You have admitted using them in the past yet you want to hang the current guys? Do as I say and not as I do?

hard to believe drugs are not present in the worlds most physically demanding sport, Only an unreasonable person believes otherwise

That ^ being said If I was a top level rider and there was a drug to take me to the next level and they were not illegal I would use it

The problem I have is it being in the amauter ranks, if you can keep out of there, I'm fine with an adult man doing it. But I laugh at everyone who thinks our sport is clean.

One thing that makes me laugh is some folks here have no problem with guys doing PEDs but I bet most of them would riot if one of the top guys' bikes was found to be illegal.

Correct me if I'm wrong but I believe the WADA testing is done via the FIM because of SX. I really don't think the AMA or FELD or MX Sports have the money/want to spend the money to run a legit drug prevention program. It's odd because the top guys in the sport make enough money and the sport is hard enough that the results from using would be pretty much a no-brainer for someone willing to do it.

I wish there was a way to have a drug testing program that was comprehensive and removed most doubt, but until there's more money/coverage in the sport, I don't believe it will happen.

And when/if money/coverage comes, then it's already too late... there'd be a Lance Armstrong type blowout.

There's always a blowout when truth is avoided. History constantly repeats itself.

If in fact testing doesn't work/isn't effective shouldn't WADA be disbanded? Is it all just window dressing or is there actually some legitimacy to WADA?

UpTite-Optional question: What years were you using PEDs in professional SX/MX?

Predictably, you've put yourself forward again as the poster child of the shallow, unpragmatic thinking on this issue.

The issue isn't the legitimacy of WADA's banned substance list, or whether there is PED use in MX, or whether it should bother us or not.

The issue is whether our sport can economically support a testing regime for any given substance that actually is more than window dressing offered up to shut up simpletons who crow for testing without having any real sense of what that entails in a truly effective program.

One can't answer that question, or the question of WADA's "legitimacy," without being specific about what substances should be tested for to ferret out PED use in MX. Once that's done you can look at what sampling and testing that entails, the cost of testing individual samples as well as the required frequency for sampling to be meaningful rather than a PR crapshoot so that together you have a real and honest sense of the total cost per athlete. Then you can estimate how much it will cost to implement such a program. Once that's done, you can decide who is going to pay for that.

Some substances are easier to test for. WADA's testing for anabolic steroids by all accounts is in the ballpark, even if the organization still has trouble keeping up with the chemists trying to keep ahead of things. The efficacy of its testing for HGH and the ESA's like EPO is controversial, and the CAS has ruled in favor of athletes nullifying WADA sanctions holding that WADA has not established validity of its testing and thresholds for abuse, particularly with naturally occurring agents where WADA is attempting to distinguish between endogenous and exogenous origin of a sampling result.

So, at best, the efficacy of testing is questionable for the substances people speculate the most about as being relevant to MX (recovery and endurance). We're talking about tests that run in the hundreds or thousands of dollars each sample (blood or urine depending on the substance) for each athlete, and to be fair all qualifying athletes ought to be tested, not just some random hat pull of a few guys now and then on the notion that people will be deterred because they might be (1) one of the few sampled (2) while they are in use. That's the current system, which really is not that good at either deterring or catching violators on the sorts of substances you'd expect to see in MX. Realistically, folks have to grapple with a program that would almost certainly cost into the millions if it were effective rather than just some intermittent show sampling, and ask themselves who would pay for it and whether the sport can economically absorb that.

When someone is prepared to discuss what the sport ought to do in that context, having done some homework, fair enough. The discussions on this board, however, are redundant and useless at best, and defamatory at worst when it lapses into the sort of speculation people offer about why a particular rider performs well. Simply crying about PED use without thinking through the issue doesn't do a damn thing.

Anyone that wants to spend time better understanding the issue rather than just talking shit can start here, but it's not the only place.

http://www.lawinsport.com/articles/anti-doping