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In the grad scheme of things, the Olympics are nothing more than a for-profit marketing venture for all of those involved. I could really care less if these super-humans are drugged or not.

The Olympics have lost their special shine a long, long time ago.

How difficult is it to understand? I could run this organisation standing on my HEAD!

Any, and I mean ANY athlete caught with any banned substance in their body is banned for LIFE. New tests will arrive along the way and athletes will be caught cheating using new methods, but they will be banned for life too.

No compromise, no excuses, no way back.

Makes my blood boil, listening to all these pontificating bureaucrats coming up with all the reasons under the sun as to why they can't do their jobs.

Any federation that does not comply with testing is suspended until they comply, and any nation refusing to comply and is subsequently suspended can not then be eligible to host any major games for 25 years.

There, now give me the job for goodness sake.

Can anybody tell me exactly how much drug testing goes on in football or rugby or athletics? I ask this because cycling, the sport seen as the worst for doping (and in the past maybe rightly so), is a sport I know which has very stringent measures and testing. If Howman is correct and doping is rife in every sport can't one infer that cycling is infact cleaner because it is finding the dopers but, as an inevitable result, gets the bad publicity.

I think it's great that the ´óÏó´«Ã½ have done an article on how wide spread doping probably is, however I think it would be worthwhile pointing out that there are serious health issues related to doping.

In Britain we very readily overturn lifetime Olympic bans for athletes who miss 3 consecutive drugs tests, and that is a fact. Not a very good example.

Hear hear to life bans, time to stand up and be leaders here, its simple, take away a sportsmen career and let them think about how good they may have been from the sidelines. We need to reinstall the values in all sports people across the world, so that over used word 'champion' once again reflects the integrity of those who truly lead by 'good' example on and off the field of play.

I agree with the essence of what Psychodudu (!)is saying, but the mitigation comes with the confusion over what is banned, what is not and what the anti-dopers cannot detect yet. Just like computer viruses, as soon as one remedy is created, another drug pops up, and with the profits in doping as high as ever this is unlikely to change.

For a global phenomenon worth tens of billions of pounds, the real scandal is the measly budget Howman and his band have to play with. And that's just for detection, as far as this article implies. What is really needed is a compulsory, yearly percentage-based donation to the WADA from sport's governing bodies. Then research and detection could be stepped up immeasurably.

I think the world of sport needs to be ready for the fact that if you step up anti-doping efforts, you are going to find a LOT more dopers. Most sports play lip service to testing, and deny that they have a problem. The sports that have the worst reputations for doping, like cycling and athletics, have paid a price for their more stringent testing procedures with negative public perceptions and lost advertising revenues. Would sports such as football, whose various players bodies and associations have been resistant to increased testing in the past, be willing to risk their huge power bases and financial backing? I doubt it.
I don't think you can say sport A should lose some of its big names to life time bans while sport B never seems to return any positives, it has to be a level playing field.
It's very easy to say "life bans for everyone caught", but it's more complicated than that. Until testing procedures are watertight, all sports are equally tested and sanctioned, and sports are prepared for long running legal battles for athletes appealing against bans, you can't hammer sports that are leading the way.
Also, in a lot of situations, athletes doping practices aren't uncovered until they have retired or in the latter stages of their career, so what happens there? The record books are a mess in some sports at the moment, and some recent stories have suggested that we might have a lot of rewriting to do in a lot of different sports. There is a Pandora's box to be opened here, and I don't think a lot of people realise the consequences.

. If Howman is correct and doping is rife in every sport can't one infer that cycling is infact cleaner because it is finding the dopers but, as an inevitable result, gets the bad publicity.
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No. You can't really infer anything from any testing regime unless every athlete in every sport is subject to the same tests at the same frequency.

I would suggest that doping is still far more rife in cycling than in many other sports like football purely because of the necessary physical attributes needed. Power/Endurance events like Cycling and Athletics are more prone to drugs because it has a larger impact on performance. Football is so much a skill/tactical sport rather than power/endurance and as far as I am aware there are no drugs to help with that.

5. At 11:37pm on 16 Mar 2011, maxmerit wrote:

In Britain we very readily overturn lifetime Olympic bans for athletes who miss 3 consecutive drugs tests, and that is a fact. Not a very good example.
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Yes we are so awful for overturning a ban that no other country in the world would have given out in the first place.

***facepalm

Life bans don't work.

In cases where they have been applied you still see doping offenders in those sports, so it clearly doesn't work as a deterent.

They also inevitably lead to ourt cases as testing is not and very likely will never be watertight. Contamination happens, mistakes happen.

No. You can't really infer anything from any testing regime unless every athlete in every sport is subject to the same tests at the same frequency.

I would suggest that doping is still far more rife in cycling than in many other sports like football purely because of the necessary physical attributes needed. Power/Endurance events like Cycling and Athletics are more prone to drugs because it has a larger impact on performance. Football is so much a skill/tactical sport rather than power/endurance and as far as I am aware there are no drugs to help with that.

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Power and endurance is a massive part of football, and there have been plenty of hastily brushed under the carpet stories about players, and indeed clubs having some very odd medical practices. If you dig a little bit, you start to join the dots.

Also, look how the media and fans within a sport deal with drug stories. If a rumours of cyclist having anything to do with drugs starts to circulate, they are immediately seen as guilty, along with everyone who associates with them. In football, you are innocent until proven guilty, and stories with any hint of rumour are squashed immediately.

When football stories do get an airing, they are not often related to the problem of doping, such as the Adrian Mutu story, which is often erroneously included in this debate, as cocaine is NOT considered a performance enhancing drug, even though it is banned.

Going after the athletes is not always the best approach. Its very simplistic to say that they should know better, but the environment which they are in plays a huge part. In cycling in the late 90's, early 2000's, every team was involved in doping - if you didnt dope, you didnt ride.

It would be far better to go after the infrastructure surrounding doping. Such as the doctors and medical centres. It is alleged that Pantani and others received their r-EPO whilst being treated at a medical centre in Bologna - this same medical centre was found to have bought up 50% of all r-EPO in Italy. Operacion puerto focussed on Doctor Eufemiano Fuentes. Marion jones was caught up in the BALCO scandal in California

look at the supply chain for known banned substances - why are these bing bought by medical centres? how are they getting to athletes? This is the way to stop the systemic doping. After that, individual cases will still be found, but it will be no where near todays levels

Its the systemic use of doping which is ruining sport, and this is only sustainable with the support of big medical centres and doctors.

It seems that the best ploy for cheats is to miss or avoid the testers and return after a one or two year ban.

Having played rugby semiprofessionally for 9 years in National 1 and 3 (now the championship and National 2) I know of only 2 team mates that were tested. Both fringe players in the first team, one of which got banned for 12 months for steroids. Steroids are used a lot in amateur rugby, the knowledge is that there is no way a tester will turn up at an amateur club's doors so what does it matter. I guess the same could be said for Rugby League too.

Athletes should be banned for life, it is the only way to put a significant deterrant on. Whether that would be classed as a restriction of trade or not though I have no idea?

I also know of a famous rugby league player being caught out however his father threatened to publicise all the players who he dealt steroids and other substances to and the RFL swept it under the carpet. The player in question served a ban on the QT under the publicised version that he was suffering an injury.

Probably get moderated but I've named no names so not sure why it should.