Bradley Simpson

Unfortunately the reality of many elite sports these days is that the technology to test and catch drug cheats is, in all but a few cases, going to come after the sporting bodies know an illegal drug even exists.

But is this the governing bodies fault? Not at all. How can these organisations possible compete with companies who manufacture these performance enhancing substances full time? How can they predict what the new, specifically manufactured, performance enhancing drugs are going to be? It is close to impossible, and for this reason there is always going to be a lag before tests are developed to detect new drugs. In some cases this will not be till well after the athlete in question has set world records and retired.

So what is the answer?

Unfortunately there is nothing little governing bodies can do to prevent intelligent, well planned cheats from getting away with it. Only those on lower budgets and/or of lower intelligence will ever get caught.

Perhaps the only answer lies in an ‘open’ drug Olympics, where athletes can take what they like? Some cynics would argue that is not too far from what we have now…

This entry was posted on January 11, 2009 at 10:19 am and is filed under Athletics, Bodybuilding, Cycling, Exercise, Fitness, Football, Golf, Gym, Hockey, Olympics, Rugby, Running, Sport, Supplements, Swimming, Triathlon, Weight Gain, Weight Training. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.