Doping in Sport

semi-pro waster said:
It sort of belongs in here but Maria Sharapova has had her doping ban reduced to 15 months from the original two years. The arguments that seem to have led to the reduction are that it was fine to delegate her responsibility for compliance to her agent and that the change in meldonium's status wasn't specifically noted.

Surely if it's fine to delegate the responsibility there is still an issue of vicarious liability and/or principle agent at play here otherwise it makes a mockery of the system when a player can blame their agent/trainer/flunky for their consumption of any banned substances and receive reduced sanctions while the person taking the blame receives little to no sanction at all. This strikes me as being a long way from what was intended and sends out the wrong message to athletes. The original ban didn't seem particularly harsh so reducing it yet further appears daft.

Sharapova's lawyer's description of this decision as a "stunning repudiation of the ITF" rather made me smile - it's almost as if his client wasn't found to be at fault or indeed still remained banned. Maybe the ITF do need to be clearer about communicating the substances on their banned list but a) professional athletes should be checking what they consume and b) most of the other tennis players somehow managed to abide by the rules.
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At the bloody time she openly admitted in an interview the updated list was emailed to her and she didn't bother to read it! She admitted fault was completely on her part.

It's a complete and utter shambles. The punishment doesn't fit the crime in the first place and then still is made less after the fact. Sets a pathetic example and despite all the blowup and MSM coverage of doping in sport these past few years there is really no favours being done in continuing with these pathetic examples of justice.

It is beyond saving I honestly think. Professional sport in so many areas is damaged beyond repair and the governing bodies who should be setting examples and doing what they can to resurrect any faith in themselves are failing.
 
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reiyushin said:
Yea the 10% argument is very frustrating.... If I could instantly add 10% to my current powerlifting total I'd have won IPF worlds this year.

10% is absolutely huge!
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If I was 10% faster at my half Marathon Sunday I would have won with a 2 minute lead on 2nd place!
 
Doping should have life bans.

But there are also cases of sports men/women taking something by mistake.

Surely, you cannot ban someone for doing something by mistake but then how do you distinguish?
 
shaf said:
Doping should have life bans.

But there are also cases of sports men/women taking something by mistake.

Surely, you cannot ban someone for doing something by mistake but then how do you distinguish?
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You'd probably be surprised how quickly the "accident" rate drops once people know they will just be handed a life time ban with no other option.
 
xdcx said:
At the bloody time she openly admitted in an interview the updated list was emailed to her and she didn't bother to read it! She admitted fault was completely on her part.

It's a complete and utter shambles. The punishment doesn't fit the crime in the first place and then still is made less after the fact. Sets a pathetic example and despite all the blowup and MSM coverage of doping in sport these past few years there is really no favours being done in continuing with these pathetic examples of justice.

It is beyond saving I honestly think. Professional sport in so many areas is damaged beyond repair and the governing bodies who should be setting examples and doing what they can to resurrect any faith in themselves are failing.
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I have days when I think it's all a bit beyond saving but other times when I do think that at least some progress is being made. It's slow and there's lots of setbacks but I have to hope or I'd probably give up on sport.

shaf said:
Doping should have life bans.

But there are also cases of sports men/women taking something by mistake.

Surely, you cannot ban someone for doing something by mistake but then how do you distinguish?
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Professional athletes are meant to know what they are putting into their bodies or they employ someone who can do this for them. I'm sure it can be difficult under some circumstances to determine exactly what is in each supplement but ultimately it is down to the athlete to be sure that what they take is not on the banned list.

There will occasionally be situations where an athlete takes a supplement or medication and the ingredients are different in different countries e.g. sometimes a cold remedy in one country will be fine but in another it will contain a banned substance even though it is superficially the same. In such circumstances I have a certain amount of sympathy and would probably encourage some leniency but it would have to be a very rare occurrence and clearly an honest mistake.

As tom_e says maybe there's some element of athletes not taking it all that seriously when they see/feel that the authorities don't take it seriously. Typically for punishments to be effective as deterrents there's got to be a high likelihood of being caught and for the outcome to be sufficiently offputting when compared to the benefits of the action - I don't know whether that has to be a life ban or something particularly punitive but it should be consistently applied and it needs to be administered fairly and openly.
 
Minstadave said:
Doping should be made legal.

Let science push the boundaries - I'm curious to see what the human body is capable of with no restrictions!
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Out of interest how would this reconcile with being a doctor? Isn't one of the principles of the Hippocratic Oath something along the lines of "cause no injury" which I'd presume includes assisting others to injure themselves? I appreciate that there's quite a lot of grey areas in terms of what can cause injury or shorten a lifespan but over the years there's been a lot of athletes who through doping have come to a premature end or suffered permanent injuries - granted being an athlete is in some ways a bit of an unhealthy occupation but I think doping pushes the risk levels that bit higher.
 
It's more out of curiosity than any professional stand point. You can use science to create the lightest bike, the best nutrtition program, high altitude training to increase your haematocrit but you can't take a drug. It feels like quite an artificial distinction to be honest.

I agree there is a lot of potential for long term harm for short term performance gains - but with proper research and funding t would be interesting to see if there were potential benefits from developing drugs that improve the performance of the human body. I don't know how you reconcile the risk vs benefit though.
 
There's nothing healthy about professional sport at the elite level anyway, which is why such a massive effort is made with trying to optimise an athlete's recovery and using as much assistance as the rules allow before things like AAS even enter the equation (and why stuff gets added to the banned list all the time). Ignoring the performance enhancement the biggest benefit of using drugs is how much it does so much for recovery. While the famous

As far as doping and health, they're going to be on WAY less gear than your Mr. Olmypias and the guys in untested powerlifting and my understanding is that the dangers tend to come from less well-off athletes not being able to either afford the best stuff or being reckless with it (e.g. Marion Jones hated needles so had several drugs injected at once rather than seperately as they should have been). IIRC there's studies showing Olympians actually have a slightly longer average life expectancy than gen pop.
 
It's not an easy thing to answer though. People will always try and cheat and drug designers will always be ahead of the people testing for them. If you had tested v.s. untested like you do with bodybuilding or powerlifting then you'll get the same thing that happens there, where people who haven't got the genetics to compete at the top of untested cheat in tested because they can win there. If you go completely untested then athletes will go cray-cray with it, and given their willingness to take things which haven't even undergone proper human trials you could certainly expect health consequences.
 
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