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major hassle! is it the same abroad?

Interesting article, the whole drugs in sport issue throws up so many questions. Where can I find a list of countries that don't do out of competition testing like this? I've heard stories about certain countries, and it certainly doesn't seem to be a level playing field internationally, so it seems.

In cycling they do this as well as a biological passport system, and still people manage to slip through the net. In athletics they had the Balco scandal where what the athletes were taking wasn't detectable, so all the testing in the world made no difference!

Also, does the IOC banned list include veterinary products? There was a scandal in Belgian cycling involving animal steroids a few years ago, which I believe have been used in athletics since the 80s.

With a system like this it seems that it's more likely to catch the Alan Baxters of this world rather than the Ben Johnsons...

@moochy75.
It's not a major hassle. It is a simple price to pay for clean sport!

A couple of issues you might want to raise with UKAD

1) Have you eaten anything containing glycerol such as in a fruit yogurt or a vitamin E capsule?

S5. DIURETICS AND OTHER MASKING AGENTS
Masking agents are prohibited. They include:
Diuretics, desmopressin, plasma expanders (e.g. glycerol;.....

WADA has never set a minimum limit for glycerol which is crazy given that it is a common food ingredient.

2) You checked Diclofenic (spelling) on the online widget Global DRO, but what you won't find listed there are all the other names that are legally used to describe ingredients in sports supplements. A good example of of this is methylhexaneaminem, which is often listed as something completely different such as "1,3-dim" or "Geranamine". You could check any of the latter against the WADA List of Global DRO and think you are safe! No wonder people are testing positive for this all over the place!

Thanks for the DRO link, very useful site. Never knew that my insulin is technically banned :/ though I suspect they would grant an exemption certificate for a Type 1 diabetic to do rifle shooting without too many problems if I ever made that standard.

PS "Informed Sport" is not the same thing as Global DRO for supplements. It is a process to get an accreditation simliar to "Freedom Food" from the RSPCA.

3.
At 08:36 16th Jun 2011, Kevin Morice wrote:

@moochy75.
It's not a major hassle. It is a simple price to pay for clean sport!
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Spoken as one who has never had to deal with it obviously.

Hee hee, according to the Global DRO website, marijuana is allowed - but only out of competition...

Interesting piece, by the way. It seems to suggest that perhaps some people who fell foul of similar wherabouts schemes (Tim Don and Christine Ohuruogu, for instance) were subjected to a lot more suspicion, criticism and finger-pointing than they should have been.

Interesting update Tom. Do you feel that if you were actually an elite shotputter with a realistic chance of making an Olympics that you would naturally be more cautious? I understand that you are doing your best and I commend you for taking on the task but you don't really have anything to lose were you to take something that is banned and subsequently fail a test. Would you subconsciously be far more wary of what you put in your body if it was your career on the line and not just an experiment for journalistic purposes?

A really interesting experiment, always liking your blogs Tom... However, I was kinda intrigued as to what would happen if you found out 'post-consumption' that your medicine/supplement was on the banned list. Could you report this, and serve an unpenalised (in terms of suspension) time out of competition, or would you have to keep quiet so as to hope you don't get found out ?? Looking forward to the next entry

So it is a fairly intrusive and time consuming experience then? (if the athletes' PA isn't doing it all for them)

The clean athletes that have to go through this inconvenience should be remonstrating with athletes who have failed drugs test or are still competing with an advantage.

My son entered an age-group National sporting tournament held during his GCSEs. The additional stress of training and examination fatigue had made him breathless. The locum GP diagnosed exercise-induced asthma and made him try out an inhaler to prove that he could use it.
Naturally, it was a banned substance.
We spent a frantic 24 hours contacting governing bodies, the tournament GP etc to ensure that should a drugs tester turn up (they didn't) that he would not have his whole future sporting career ruined.
I should mention that once his school examinations were finished he has never had another "episode" and no hospital follow-up ever ensued. It was a very salutary lesson for us that even health professionals can cause athletes a major "scare" pre-competition. (Our son's team also won silver medals that year!)

Great to see you doing this. One question and one comment that concerns me:

1. Why do you have to provide overnight information and details of your training log IN ADDITION to the specified one hour a day? It strikes me that it is this extra level of (unnecessary?) intrusion that increases the hassle (and risk of mistakes) by an order of magnitude.

2. "...registered nutritionist...". It is a real shame that dietitians go through years of education and training to obtain this legally protected label and then the media equate them with nutritionists. Anyone can call themselves a nutritionist including, infamously, people with postal PhDs from non-accredited American universities or Bachelors degrees in Psychology (NB. I have one of those so am not doing it down at all, but questioning its relevance in the field of nutrition). The ´óÏó´«Ã½ have an important role to play here to prevent these potentially dangerous quacks from gaining/maintaining credibility.

Staying clean is simple, eat clean food, nothing from a packet or a tin, if it can be picked or had eyes and died it's fine. The problem with most athletes and organisations is they have become part of the food sales merry-go-round.

It's a shame most athletes don't understand that putting toxins into your body through processed food stuffs not only increases you risk of being inadvertently caught out but also prohibits your performance. All of the well known brands of sports drink actually dehydrate you, just because in the short term they give you a false sugar kick (Aspartame and Acesulfame K are actually sweetners not sugar) doesn't mean in the overall scheme they are beneficial.

Our bodies are 55-60% water and yet most people never drink enough water each day to replace what is used. And then athletes wonder why they get fatigued (which potentially leads to injury) and why people in general feel tired.

Don't want to get caught out? Clean out your cupboards and start eating and drinking clean

#12

Haha, athlete's PA! How many GB athlete's can afford their own PA?

#16.

Tom Fordyce's previous blog on the subject carried the first line: 'Andy Murray calls it "draconian". Rafael Nadal says it makes him "feel like a criminal".'

I'd say they may have PA's. The whereabouts clause isn't confined to GB athletes.

Very interesting article, I know the system is a means of keeping athletics free from cheats, but what I can't understand it why that it needs to know every single move that you make every day. Why is it not enough to just be able to specify that one hour every day where you will be.

@moochy75.
It's not a major hassle. It is a simple price to pay for clean sport!
---------------
Spoken as one who has never had to deal with it obviously.
--------------------------

No, I haven't. But I have had to report my whereabouts and be available in a specific place for 8 hours a day, 5 days a week for the last 13 years. I don't even get the luxury of choosing where that location is from day-to-day, nor can I text, phone or email in at 5 minutes notice and go somewhere else instead. And for all those 40 hours every week I am at about the same risk of being randomly drug tested for substances that are banned by my job as any athlete is, and I also face random alcohol testing to boot. Nor do I find it particularly difficult to tell you where I am going to sleep tonight, or where and when I am going to train tomorrow (if you want I can even give you my daily training down to an hourly level and sleeping schedule from now till September with a 98% accuracy and the one or two sessions I might change I will be able to tell you a week before I change them).

It's not that hard to have a basic level of organisational skills. If you want to be a top level professional athlete your training schedule should be laid out months in advance and it isn't really asking that much for you to know what you are doing tomorrow. Especially if you are getting paid for it!

Tom is managing fine despite holding down a full-time job which involves randomly travelling around the country, and changing his training plans on-the-day. Why is it so hard for a full-time professional athlete to cope to the same standard? And how can they then get it wrong, not just on three occasions, but on the three specific occasions that the testers actually come looking to check on them??

-> ThirdWindow wrote: Hee hee, according to the Global DRO website, marijuana is allowed - but only out of competition...

Remember that cannabis (cannabinoidis) stay in the body for quite some time, and so you can use marijuana outside competition (by "accident" at a party a week before an event, but then when the testers choose you for a doping test, you might end up with a positive doping test and thereof a possible sanction (from public warning to 3-6 months is the usual length)

I have not tested the Whereabout system as thoroughly as Tom Fordyce, but I was introduced to the Norwegian system years ago - before the system was ready in Adams, and was also shown how to use it. It wasn't hard back then, and I don't think it is any harder now. I agree with the previous commentator saying that athletes at a professional level that only has to think about eating, sleeping and training should be able to update their where about information.
Also: The system allows for trainers, personal assistants and other persons in the athletes team to update this system.
And it is a small price to pay in order to have clean athletes in sports. In our database we have as many as 36 people being sanctioned for failing to provide where about information. UK shares second place.

#15 - Many of the animals which we eat are treated with drugs and other unnatural substances for commercial reasons. Another little complication.

Tom - thanks for providing an interesting insight. It seems a shame that the honest athletes who want to compete fairly and cleanly have to work so hard to do do. What do you think could be done tio make things easier for them ?

#21 - agreed, that's why you should only eat organic, to avoid pesticides etc. It doesn't have to be complicated if the knowledge is there, unfortunately there are those allied to food manufacturers who, for commercial reasons, would prefer that this knowledge doesn't get out

Cider (#4),
Not only is glycerol a common food ingredient, it is an important sub-structure of a large number of naturally occuring fats and oils (triglycerides) in many foods. These are broken down in the body to yield "fatty acids" and glycerol (also named glycerine). As such, it is an important part of your biochemistry, so I would be very surprised to see it listed as being a "watched" substance. About as useful measuring sugars (it being technically a "carbohydrate").

Runsteff (#14),
I would guess that the answer to your first question is to help the testers know approximately where an athlete is going to be. In his first blog, Tom said that you can change the details of 'the hour' at 60 seconds notice. So if an athlete says they will be in, say, Newcastle and not London, with only 60 seconds notice, then they can be sure of not being tested. Giving overnight addresses and travel plans makes this harder. The flexibility doesn't penalise athletes for not giving this information but, as Tom said, may arouse suspicions if it happens often.

I would also guess that people trying to beat-the-system by taking drugs with a relatively short half-life in the body, will frequently schedule one 'hour' at 06:00 and the next one at 23:00 the following day, allowing 41 hours to get the drug concentration in the body back to levels that might pass a test.
Of course, there could also be genuine reasons for wanting to do this. I'm curious to know what the procedures are when such suspicions do occur.

I can (almost) sympathize with Andy Murray and Rafa Nadal objecting to the obligations. But as a poster on Tom's first blog pointed out, someone could quite easily make a "smart-phone" app to do all this automatically (and probably make a handsome profit). Either of them could afford to pay someone to do it.

Anyway, Tom, it's an educational blog to read, and I enjoy thinking about the issues it raises. Proper journalism.

Tom, please have a look at this website:

The site's owner makes a very convincing case that steroid/PED use is rampant in tennis. Journalists have not been doing their jobs in ignoring the myriad telltale signs that something's amiss.

Perhaps you'll be the writer to really break this story wide open.

I was once surprised to find the shampoo I was using had a 'warning for competitive athletes' on it - it had caffeine in it (don't ask why) which would obviously increase the amount of the stuff in your hair follicles, which could be bad news if you were tested. I'd never have thought the shampoo I was using could potentially cause problems, so just goes to show!

PS - Tom - I imagine the rain would have kept all but the hardiest drugs tester away from the Rose Bowl!