Lance Armstrong stooped to doping
CYCLING
Professional cyclists began taking banned substances at the dawn of the sport's development. Race organizers decided to seriously address the problem only in the early 1950s – it was then that innovative methods for detecting banned substances in the body appeared. The watershed moment was the death of Tom Simpson, who died from an amphetamine overdose (the effect of which is to increase activity and alertness, reduce fatigue, improve concentration, and decrease the need for sleep) on the 13th stage of the Tour de France multi-stage race. This happened in 1967.
Time passed, but the problem remained. Doping scandals in modern cycling are mushrooming. One of the most high-profile doping exposés was the story of cancer survivor American Lance Armstrong, who is the only athlete to have finished first overall in the Tour de France seven times (1999-2005). And all would have been fine if in one interview the athlete had not stated that winning such a cycling marathon without stimulants is impossible. The reward quickly found its hero: in 2012, Lance was disqualified for life for doping and stripped of all titles won from 1998 onward.
Russian athletes were not left out either. One of the most successful Russian road cyclists of recent years, Olga Zabelinskaya, was caught in July 2014 using a banned fat burner. However, the verdict in her case has not yet been announced, so there is hope for a favorable outcome.
But for one of the best Russian riders of the last decade, Denis Menchov, it is already too late to hope for the best: in the same July he was disqualified for two years for violating anti-doping rules. The athlete's results at the Tour de France in 2009, 2010, and 2012 were also annulled.
ATHLETICS
Until the 1980s, cases of doping in athletics were isolated, not fully confirmed, and did not cause widespread public outcry. The participant in the first major scandal was Canadian sprinter Ben Johnson. In 1988, he won the 100-meter dash in the final of the Seoul Olympics with a world record, and the next day the banned substance stanozolol (increases strength and endurance), one of the most widely used steroid doping drugs to this day, was found in the Canadian's body. For violating the regulations, Johnson was disqualified.
The unification of Germany revealed the secret of the success of athletes from the former world leader in athletics – the German Democratic Republic. The most striking story is that of 1986 European shot put champion Heidi Krieger. At the request of the coaching staff, from adolescence the athlete took anabolic steroids and male hormones, which caused irreversible changes in her body, and in 1997 Heidi underwent gender reassignment surgery, becoming Andreas. The Krieger case was made public, and in 2000 the athlete's (sportsman?) testimony helped prove the guilt of former president of the GDR German Gymnastics and Sports Union Manfred Ewald and former vice-director of the GDR sports medical service Manfred Höppner, who were found guilty of harming 142 athletes, including minors.
In Russia, the most 'doping' discipline in recent years has been race walking. The result of the most high-profile exposure of Russian walkers was the two-year disqualification of Olympic champion Elena Lashmanova. In January 2014, a deadly drug – the metabolite GW1516 (gene doping) – was found in the doping sample of the leader of the women's national team.
As Nikolai Durmanov, one of the most famous Russian anti-doping specialists, told Infox.ru in an interview, GW1516 is a scientific and technical revolution in medicine and sports. Technologies developed to treat serious modern diseases have been widely and clandestinely used in illegal sports medicine. GW1516 reprograms the functioning of genes in the human body. The drug, invented in the United States, was tested on mice, which after its use ran 60-70 percent longer and farther than their ordinary counterparts. Nevertheless, sufficient studies on humans have not been conducted. There is a suspicion that the use of GW1516 can reprogram the functioning of the human heart muscle, which can lead to fatal consequences.
In addition to Lashmanova, from 2005 to 2014, 11 Russian walkers were caught doping.
BIATHLON
One of the most popular winter sports also did not escape doping scandals. But oddly enough, the first case of athletes using banned substances was recorded only in 2000. A doping test of Finnish biathlete Outi Kettunen showed the presence of a steroid – nandrolone, which helps to quickly build muscle mass without significant contraindications. The athlete was punished with a one-year disqualification.
Unfortunately, today the main source of doping scandals in biathlon is Russia. In December 2008, there was something of a mass 'catching' of our biathletes: three members of the main national team – Albina Akhatova, Ekaterina Yurieva, and Dmitry Yaroshenko – were caught using banned substances. The trio received a three-year disqualification without the right to compete not only in the 2010 Games but also in the home Olympics in Sochi. Surprisingly, quite recently Yurieva had a repeat violation. Another eight-year suspension put an end to even the theoretical return of Ekaterina. However, on February 21 of this year, a few days before the opening of the repeat doping sample, Yurieva announced her retirement.
Like a thunderclap at the end of 2013, the disqualification of Irina Starykh broke out. The biathlete from Tyumen was the main hope of the women's team for the Olympics in Sochi. Everyone who knew and trained Starykh did not believe that the athlete consciously went to use prohibited substances. The athlete's first coach, Valery Kondakov, suggested that someone could have deliberately mixed prohibited substances into her food. Nevertheless, this did not save the Russian woman from a two-year disqualification.
CROSS-COUNTRY SKIING
Here, the mass 'catching' of athletes also started only in the early 2000s, although in the 80s-90s there were many rumors. In 2001, during the World Ski Championships in Lahti, six Finnish skiers immediately got caught using the prohibited drug HES (hydroxyethyl starch). This drug belongs to a group of medications that are not stimulants of anything, but hinder the laboratory detection of stimulants. Therefore, they are included in the prohibited lists.
The consequences of the scandal that erupted were catastrophic for Finnish skiing. The national team not only lost several won medals (including gold in the men's relay and silver in the women's), but also the best skiers (all six were disqualified for two years), coaches (lifetime ban from sports activities), and most of the sponsors.
The first unpleasant case involving the use of prohibited substances by Russians occurred in 1997 at the World Cross-Country Skiing Championships. Six-time Olympic champion Lyubov Egorova was caught using bromantane (also known as adamantylbromphenylamine, also known as ladasten, a domestic miracle potion that gives athletes extraordinary strength and endurance) and was disqualified for three years.
The loudest doping scandal in domestic cross-country skiing occurred in 2002 during the Olympics in Salt Lake City. Erythropoietin, a hormone that sharply increases blood aerobic capacity, was found in the bodies of Larisa Lazutina and Olga Danilova. Russian skiers did not learn from this story, and in 2009, on the eve of the games in Vancouver, Olympic champions Yevgeny Dementyev and Yuliya Chepalova, as well as promising Natalya Matveeva and Nina Rysina, were caught on a new generation of artificial erythropoietin. Later, famous skier Nikolay Pankratov joined the number of disqualified. All were suspended from sports for two years.
The result of the measures taken was a change in the leadership of the Russian Cross-Country Skiing Federation (FLGR). With the arrival of legendary Elena Vyalbe as president of the federation, loud scandals began to bypass our team, but there are no more past victories.
SWIMMING
The use of prohibited substances in swimming was first talked about back in the 19th century. The pioneers not only in this sport but in sports as a whole were the Dutch. In 1865, at a tournament in Amsterdam, several swimmers were immediately caught using stimulants – according to an old Dutch tradition, athletes relieved stress. Disqualification was avoided then, as there was no anti-doping legislation at that time.
The first official case occurred at the 1972 Munich Olympics. American swimmer Rick DeMont was caught on ephedrine, which is intended to help fight excess weight. The athlete was stripped of the gold medal he won in the 400-meter freestyle. True, a little later it turned out that DeMont was asthmatic and had medical permission for the medication. But even 29 years later, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) refused to review the results of the competition.
Among Russian athletes, three-time world champion Yuliya Efimova was noted for the loudest scandal. In January 2014, a substance from the class of anabolic steroids was found in the athlete's doping sample. Later, the athlete stated that she used a fat burner, not knowing that it contained a prohibited substance. The admission did not save Efimova from disqualification: the athlete was suspended from competition for 16 months.
Among the very recent cases is the disqualification of Sergey Makov. As part of the Russian national team in October 2013, Makov set a world record in the mixed relay at the World Cup stage in Moscow; later, ostarine, a drug for muscle mass gain, was found in his doping sample. A year later, the athlete received a disappointing verdict – two years of disqualification.
'CLEAN'
Despite the constant stream of news about another caught athlete or the emergence of new progressive methods of combating doping, there are sports where the percentage of prohibited substance use is negligible. These primarily include football and hockey. In recent years, about two thousand samples have been taken in Russian football, and only three of them gave positive results. One case each was detected in 2010, 2011, and 2012 – the athletes were caught on diuretics, marijuana, and stimulants, or in other words, out of their own stupidity. After all, no anabolic stimulates brain activity, so team sports fall into the 'clean' category.