Doping scandal

Pravda.Ru exposes doping controls in high-level sports as being unreliable. We warn all athletes worldwide not to eat pork or beef before a competition, because an innocent-looking steak could provide the basis for a positive nandrolone test. In a conference on food held at Tomar, in Portugal, it was revealed that if an athlete eats a certain type of pork steak, he can test positive for Nandrolone, a forbidden performance elevator, and become banned from athletic activity. The cases of Diane Modahl and Lindford Christie, two British athletes, springs to mind as both were tested positive but declared their innocence. Christie’s ban was later lifted, but his name was linked to doping. Professor Jorge Barbosa, of Portugal’s National Laboratory of Veterinary Investigation, stated that “The probability is real and it is scientifically proved that if an athlete eats an average quantity of pork, from an animal which has a high concentration of nortestosterone, the athlete can fail a doping test (for nandrolone)” because he or she will have an accumulated level of metabolites. The Italian sports legislation, for example, stipulates a suspension of 18 months for football players caught with an illegal concentration of nandrolone, which happened recently to Portuguese football player Fernando Couto, of Lazio. Athletes who consume a 300g. pork steak can prove positive with 2 nanogrammes per millilitre of blood of nandrolone, if the steak has certain characteristics. If the pork in question comes from an uncastrated male animal, high concentrations of nortestosterone will be found in the meat. This substance has an endogenous origin and can reach concentration levels in muscles of 25 microgrammes per kg, and far higher levels in liver, 200 microgrammes per kg. If an athlete eats a pork steak with these properties on the evening before he is tested, he will test positive in doping controls. The same applies to beef which has been treated with anabolic steroids (to make the animal grow faster than nature would have intended). This practice can be implemented in three ways : by adding beta-agonist to animal feed, implants under the animal’s skin or by intravenous injection. These practices are illegal in the European Union but are much used in the USA. The conference also provided interesting information on foodstuffs ingested by the common public. For example, if a person eats poppy seeds present in cakes or bread, he might prove positive for opiate tests, provoking an existence of morphine in urine samples. As doping tests become more specific and more effective, it becomes easier and easier to detect the presence of chemicals, and to isolate them, in blood and urine samples. The reason for doping tests are to eliminate the cheats from international sport. The sporting community would applaud these efforts. However, when innocent athletes are consigned to the sidelines of their activity in the most important years of their career, due to flawed doping tests, it is unacceptable. Science has to find a balance between finding the cheats and eliminating them and protecting innocent victims. To be banned from activity because a person ate the wrong steak at the wrong time is unfair. Pravda.Ru alerts all athletes, in all sports, worldwide, to this fact.

TIMOTHY BANCROFT-HINCHEY, PRAVDA.RU, LISBON