Who Has the Horse Tranquilizers?

Who Has the Horse Tranquilizers?

The Olympics in Beijing are nearly upon us, and if the previous Summer Games—not to mention the events of the intervening four years—are any indication, drug scandals will be part of the festivities. In March, 11 of 14 weight lifters on the Greek Olympic team tested positive for steroid use, and the Greek coach, in turn, blamed a Chinese manufacturer for providing them with tainted supplements.

And so it begins. “There will always be someone who tests positive at the Olympics,” says Gary Wadler, a New York University medical professor and the chairman of the World Anti-Doping Agency’s Prohibited List and Methods Committee. “Somebody will do a dumb thing, thinking they can get away with it.” To some athletes, apparently, doping remains an unofficial Olympic sport. Time for a tutorial on the drugs of summer.

What They'll Try Next

By the 2012 Olympics, drug testers will likely have a new problem on their hands: some athletes will have moved beyond drugs. They will be gene doping, or altering themselves genetically. “This is infinitely more complicated,” Wadler says. By transferring synthetic genes into human cells, athletes could stimulate muscle growth, increase metabolism or boost endurance.

Those transferred genes would blend seamlessly into the athlete’s DNA. Some experts say that the future is already here, and that athletes are probably gene doping for Beijing. “This is very much on our radar screen,” Wadler says. So far, the only sure way to detect gene doping is by taking a biopsy of the affected muscle tissue — not a practical solution. Which is just the kind of test that cheaters love.

How They Might Get Away With It

Cheaters adapt, and crafty athletes are continually concocting ways to avoid positive results. Some athletes dilute their urine with water. Others use catheters to inject drug-free urine into their bladders shortly before their events. Certain methods, however, are out: male athletes will no longer get away with taking diuretics or other masking agents like the female fertility drug Clomid; those substances are now caught by the normal drug screening. A cheater’s best asset is often time.

Drug users rely on detailed calendars to determine when to stop using banned substances. EPO, for instance, can be detected only for a few days after use — but the drug is said to be effective for several weeks after that. Then there are certain male athletes who may be able to take testosterone and not worry about testing positive: a recent doping study showed that two-thirds of Asian men and 10 percent of Caucasians are missing a gene function that converts testosterone into a form that dissolves in urine. These athletes could use the steroid and still test clean.

Bolstering The Fire Wall

This is the first Olympics in which H.G.H. testing will be widely conducted; the test uses antibodies to differentiate the structural variations between H.G.H. produced by the body and the synthetic kind. The catch: An athlete will test positive only if he or she injected the drug in the previous 12 to 24 hours, according to some scientists. So the test is most effective when given by surprise. Officials have been careful not to say when such testing will begin — perhaps at training sites before the Games.

Testers In Overdrive

Some 4,500 drug tests will be performed in Beijing, 25 percent more than at the 2004 Olympics. About 900 of those will be blood tests, and another 700 to 800 will check for EPO. Who will be tested? The top five finishers in each event and two randomly selected competitors. Each will provide a urine sample, a blood sample or both. The samples will be transported — by armed guards — from 41 collection stations to a facility near the National Stadium where some 150 scientists and volunteers will work 24 hours a day. Besides looking for banned substances, they’ll look for clues that an athlete is taking something new. Low natural hormone levels, for example, indicate an athlete might be taking hormones in synthetic form.

What's On The Menu

For endurance athletes, the preferred poison is synthetic EPO (erythropoietin), a hormone that stimulates red blood cell production and, thus, oxygen-carrying capacity. Athletes in strength sports use steroids, which increase muscle mass. Human growth hormone is thought by some users to strengthen connective tissue and increase lean body mass, so it may work for most any sport. But athletes often combine drugs. A regimen might consist of steroid drops under the tongue, an EPO shot and a cream that is part testosterone and part epitestosterone (a masking agent). H.G.H. is often combined with steroids to build strength and aid recovery.

Some 4,500 drug tests will be performed in Beijing, 25 percent more than at the 2004 Olympics. About 900 of those will be blood tests, and another 700 to 800 will check for EPO. Who will be tested? The top five finishers in each event and two randomly selected competitors. Each will provide a urine sample, a blood sample or both. The samples will be transported — by armed guards — from 41 collection stations to a facility near the National Stadium where some 150 scientists and volunteers will work 24 hours a day.

That sounds like and awful waste of money and time when they can't catch most of them anyway.
Not to mention the gene manipulation!

Simply make the drug use allowable and the playing field is even.
If a person chooses not to use - that's their prerogative.

And for anyone who claims that it's not fair because some people respond better to steroids than others....well some people respond better to weigth training than other, just like some people repond better to getting fat by eating pizza and sitting on the couch.


Sal

dammit, i thought you were hawking horse tranq's.... =b