Audit Urged of Athletic Drug-Testing Records

[Mazurka Girl]

Audit urged of athletic drug-testing records (http://www2.ocregister.com/ocrweb/ocr/article.do?id=35150&section=NEWS&subsection=NEWS&year=2003&month=4&day=17)
Among the documents reviewed by the Register are a positive drug test for Scott Davis, the 1993 and 1994 U.S. national figure skating champion.

[sonora]

A read of the full article reveals that Scott apparently took(shock!) Comtrex, an over the counter cold medication that contains pseudoephedrine.

Not performance enhancing.

Any knowledgeable doctor will tell you the list of proscribed substances is full of holes, and the real review needs to be of the list itself.

[memememe76]

But we have incidents all over the place of athletes losing their medals because of taking "harmless" drugs. The Romanian gymnast, B&S, Silken Lauman. Why should these athletes be punished and not others?

[sonora]

It's a bad system, and it needs to be revamped.


I mean, what happened to Kyoko Ina? Someone showed up at her home in the middle of the night? I wouldn't let them in either, especially if I were home alone.

[BABYSKATES]

I have seen the (long) list of banned substances. Most of what is on the list is not necessarily performance enhancing but more likely dangerous to the athletes.

Obviously we have substances like steroids which are performance enhancing and a problem. We also have substances like ephedrine which cause blood pressure problems and when used in conjunction with heavy physical activity can cause such problems as stroke, heart attack and even sudden death. These substances should be banned and the athletes educated as to why they are banned. I don't think big punishment like being banned from the Olympics is necessary for substances like ephedrine.

One other reason some substances are on the banned list is that they are used to mask the illicit use of performance enhancing drugs or to "cleanse" the body in preparation for drug tests. This is why things like diuretics are banned (not to mention the fact that they are extremely dangerous also).

The system of random testing is a necessary idea but the execution of it needs to be rethought. I do think that there are grounds to win an appeal if an athlete tests positive for non performance enhancing substances. In those cases, the goal should be educational not punitive.

[Mazurka Girl]

Originally posted by sonora
I mean, what happened to Kyoko Ina? Someone showed up at her home in the middle of the night? I wouldn't let them in either, especially if I were home alone.
I'm pretty sure it was noted by the news reports that she wasn't home alone, among other observations.

[Emilieanne]

The WADA Conference in Copenhagen in March came up with a unified list of banned substance for ALL sports that are on the Olympic program. That is helpful.

Yes, there needs to be further education as to why these substances are banned and yes, there needs to be a uniform protocol regarding random testing.

There also needs to be further education about which items contain these banned substances (many very ordinary) to make it easier for someone to keep such substances out of their bodies. Did you know that caffeine is on the list of banned substances? I guess that means that Olympic athletes cannot drink coffee or tea; nor can they eat a roll with poppy seeds as that has been known to cause a positive test for heroin. This is just the type of education that is needed and needed now!

There also needs to be a list of products that can be used safely without producing a positive test for banned substances such as cold medications, etc.

There is still much work to do here. Let's get on with it.

[Rachel]

Originally posted by sonora
I mean, what happened to Kyoko Ina? Someone showed up at her home in the middle of the night? I wouldn't let them in either, especially if I were home alone.

It was 10:30, she told them she would be out until that time when notified that they were going to take a test that night, she did let them in, and she was not alone. At first Kyoko said that she was unable to produce a sample; later, Kyoko said that she did not think she had to take the test because she had turned professional, which is pretty much an admission that she just refused to do it http://www.usfsa.org/uschamp03/news/kyoko-suspension.htm

An athlete can take a certain amount of pseudoephedrine and still pass the drug test. Until this year, however, the amount of pseudephedrine that could trigger a positive test was smaller than it is now.

Caffeine is indeed a banned substance, but to test positive for it, the average person would have to drink eight cups of coffee within two or three hours of the test, and a whole lot more tea.

Poppy seeds can cause a person to test positive for opiates; this is pretty well known among people who have to take drug tests. You have to eat quite a few poppy seeds to test positive, though, and there is another test that can be used to determine whether or not poppy seeds are the real culprits, so poppy seeds aren't really much of a problem.

There are drug guides readily available to all the athletes and team doctors and there have been for years. You can even find them all over the internet. There are also lists of available alternatives and acceptable sunstitutions, and you can find those in the internet, too. Here's one Canadian example http://www.athletics.uwaterloo.ca/therapy/Engbr2000.PDF

That kind of information has been around at least since before the Sidney Olympics, as I recall looking it up then. I can't imagine that the athletes are less informed than a mere internet cruiser.

While there are a few athletes who innocently ingest banned substances, the fact remains that there are many more who ingest them quite willfully, and many, many more who do neither. The problem is not lack of information, but carelessness and cheating--two completely different problems, neither of them all that easy to correct.