Chinese Respond to Doping Accusations

[SayMyName]

China is responding to doping accusations by American swimming coaches at the London Olympics. They say the accusations are unfair, and an extreme bias on the part of Americans who are sore at losing. China now leads in gold medals as of this date. They also respond that they never made the same accusations of Phelps when he swam to 8 golds at the Peking Olympics in 2008. Are the accusations fair or not?

Ye Shiwen's father attacks 'arrogant west' after remarks over Olympic win | Sport | guardian.co.uk

 

[Colin]

China is responding to doping accusations by American swimming coaches at the London Olympics. They say the accusations are unfair, and an extreme bias on the part of Americans who are sore at losing. China now leads in gold medals as of this date. They also respond that they never made the same accusations of Phelps when he swam to 8 golds at the Peking Olympics in 2008. Are the accusations fair or not?

Ye Shiwen's father attacks 'arrogant west' after remarks over Olympic win | Sport | guardian.co.uk

How can it be considered fair when the swimming coach as good as accused the Chinese swimmer of cheating. Given that the first five finishers in every event are tested for performance enhancing drugs he should have kept his trap shut rather than airing his non-founded suspicions to the world's media. If he wanted to lodge a complaint he should have gone through the appropriate channels. Is it any surprise that he's being called a sore loser by the Chinese. I would say he has exhibited an extreme example of not only poor judgement, but poor sportsmanship too.

 

[waltky]

More doping athletes caught...

Chinese, Polish and Bulgarian athletes sanctioned for doping
Aug 12,`16 -- A Chinese swimmer, a Polish weightlifter and a Bulgarian steeplechaser were expelled or suspended Friday from the Olympics for doping, the first athletes sanctioned after failing drug tests at the games.

Weightlifter Tomasz Zielinksi and steeplechaser Silvia Danekova were kicked out of the games after testing positive for banned substances, the Court of Arbitration for Sport said. Swimmer Chen Xinyi accepted a "provisional suspension" after testing positive for a diuretic. CAS said her case will continue, with a final decision to be issued before the end of the games. The 18-year-old Chen's Olympics were over anyway. She finished fourth Sunday in the 100-meter butterfly and pulled out before Friday's 50-meter freestyle, her final event of the games.

These were the first decisions issued by CAS, which is handling doping cases at the Olympics for the first time. The International Olympic Committee handed over responsibility to CAS in a bid to make the process more independent. Chen tested positive for hydrochlorothiazide, which is listed by the World Anti-Doping Agency as a "specified substance." Athletes testing positive for those substances can receive reduced penalties because of the possibility the drug was taken inadvertently. "The athlete accepted a provisional suspension on a voluntary basis," CAS said of Chen. "As a consequence, the athlete is provisionally suspended from competing at the Olympic Games. The procedure will continue and the CAS (anti-doping division) will issue a final award before the end of the games."

China's Chen Xinyi reacts after winning the women's 50m freestyle swimming final at the 17th Asian Games in Incheon, South Korea. The Chinese Swimming Association said Chen Xinyi tested positive for the substance without providing specifics. Xinhua, the official state news agency, reported the story​

Zielinski, who was scheduled to compete in the 94-kilogram division, tested positive for the steroid 19-Norandrosterone, while Danekova tested positive for EPO, a blood-boosting hormone that aids stamina and endurance. Both were excluded from the games and stripped of their Olympic accreditation. Their cases were handed over to their international federations for possible further sanctions. Both could face two-year bans.

Danekova, 33, was not considered a medal contender in the steeplechase, which starts with heats Saturday. Zielinski already had been sent home from Rio after his positive test. On Friday, the Polish weightlifting federation said his brother, Tomasz, a gold medalist at the 2012 London Olympics, tested positive for the steroid nandrolone in Poland on July 1 and faces being sent home from Rio.

News from The Associated Press

 

[Unkotare]

And yet.....

 

[waltky]

Gene Doping the Next Cheating by Athletes?...

Gene Doping Could Be Next Step in Cheating by Athletes
August 19, 2016 - Doping scandals marred the runup to the Rio Olympics and other games of the recent past. Now, scientists warn that cheating could rise to a new level using genetic research.

There are already a number of products and methods used to boost athletic performance that the International Olympic Committee considers to be illegal. For example, there’s a hormone that can boost red blood cell production, making more oxygen available. That increases endurance. Then there are anabolic steroids and human growth hormone, which promote muscle growth. There are a couple of types of blood doping. One involves a transfusion of the athlete’s own blood that had been removed earlier and stored. The second method uses blood from another person, but of the same type as the athlete's blood. Both methods raise the number of red blood cells that carry oxygen.

Researchers Ronald Evans, right, and Yongxu Wang of the Salk Institute for Biological Studies in San Diego look at a mouse whose stamina was improved through genetic engineering in August 2004. Such a capability moves the issue of Olympic doping from drugs to actual genetic manipulation.​

Carl Johan Sundberg, a professor of molecular exercise physiology at the Karolinska Institutet in Stockholm and a member of the World Anti-Doping Agency’s gene doping panel, said scientists have gotten pretty good at detecting doping substances, as long as there’s not too much time between doping and testing. The illegal substances used "fade out over — depending on the type of drug — days, weeks or months," he said. "But with the new techniques and the new discoveries of long-term metabolites, metabolic steroids, weeks have become months. So the chance of detection has gone up a lot, which is why retesting recently of samples from the London and Beijing Olympic Games has shown that there’s a higher prevalence of doping usage than was assumed with the previous testing methodologies."

Genetic boost

The next phase of cheating, however, may involve gene doping, which Sundberg defined as "the administration of nucleic acids of some sort — mainly DNA or other types of similar molecules — that are put into the body normally in health care for the purpose of gene therapy to treat specific disorders." But athletes, he said, would be seeking "to boost certain genes that may improve performance. We don’t know yet whether this has been done anywhere, but presumably, nevertheless, it will be used sometime." WADA has been funding research to improve detection methods. Recently, the first test was unveiled for levels of artificial EPO genetic material in the body. EPO is a naturally occurring hormone that can trigger red blood cell growth in the bone marrow.

Another possibility is injecting artificial genes into muscles. Researchers are already trying to do that to help people with muscle-wasting diseases. "So, if an athlete would illicitly copy that and use that, you could inject such gene material into the muscle and possibly enhance muscle mass," Sundberg said. Sundberg warned that there are health risks to athletes who use gene doping. For instance, there can be adverse effects on the immune system from the virus that carries the artificial genes through the body. Those genes also could cause cancer because of an enhanced growth of cells.

Gene Doping Could Be Next Step in Cheating by Athletes

See also:

Athlete Talks About Using Performance-enhancing Drugs
August 19, 2016 — Adam Gusky never contemplated using performance-enhancing drugs, or PEDs, while he was a top high school football player in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, 20 years ago — but that changed when he turned semi-pro. "I thought to myself, what can I do to make myself a better player on the field while not affecting myself generally as a person off the field," Gusky said.

The dilemma is not uncommon for high-level athletes, who must weigh the potential edge the drugs can bring against the consequences, which include bans at the highest levels of competition. Orthopedic surgeon Dr. Evan Argintar of the Orthopedic Institute at MedStar Washington Hospital Center said there is an advantage to using PEDs. "Performance-enhancing drugs absolutely give athletes advantages in strength and endurance, which helps them both in the preparation for their sport as well as the actual implementation of the skills needed in many ways for the different sports," he said.

Anything for an edge

Gusky did not use needles or steroids, but rather pills that he bought at a store without a prescription. The drugs he used, while legal, are banned in major competitions like the Olympics or professional football. "I would do anything to give me an edge to try to make me as good of a football player as could be," Gusky said. But he had his limits. He refused to break the law and, although he wasn't using anything banned by his league, he said the drugs changed him on game day. "Basically, what I was doing was something that gave me increased testosterone for a short period of time, made me more aggressive for a short period of time, made me able to hit harder, to be stronger for a short period of time," he said.

But hyper-aggression turned into mood swings and ultimately ended his career after a concussion sustained from a violent helmet-to-helmet injury. Gusky says he stopped using PEDs the day he stopped playing football. "I don't want to kill myself,” he said. “I have a family. I have a wife. I have parents.”

World stage

The performance-enhancing drugs are not something he wants for himself anymore, nor is it something he wants for kids starting out. PEDs have been a big topic at this year's Summer Olympics in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, where more than 100 Russian athletes were barred from competition because of a state-approved doping scandal. There were no Russian track and field, rowing or weightlifting teams this year, and the country fielded its smallest Olympic team since 1912.

The International Olympic Committee banned the Russian athletes after it was revealed many of them had taken performance-enhancing drugs with the approval of the Russian Sports Ministry, along with evidence that Russian officials tried to cover up the allegations.

Athlete Talks About Using Performance-enhancing Drugs