Run to Win

The USATF has teamed up with The National Center for Drug Free Sport to allow free access for all of their members to the Resource Exchange Center, a subscription service of Drug Free Sport.

The REC is a portal where athletes and coaches can ask questions about drugs and supplements to make sure that they are not ingesting anything illegal within the sport and to learn of any known health risks or side effects.

The U.S. Anti-Doping Agency already has a hotline that elite athletes can call to determine if a medication or specific substance is banned. The REC broadens this concept by enabling any USATF members — not just athletes in USADA’s drug-testing pool — to inquire about supplements, which can contain multiple substances, some labeled and some not. In addition, the REC and Drug-Free Sport will provide USATF members with information that is reported by athletes who take a supplement and have an adverse reaction to it.

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Vadim Devyatovskiy and Ivan Tsikhan had their silver and bronze medals in the hammer throw from the 2008 Olympics stripped from them after having tested for elevated levels of testosterone. Devyatovskiy now faces a lifetime ban for his second doping offense, while Tsikhan faces a 2 year ban.

The silver will go to Krisztian Pars of Hungary and the bronze to Koji Murofushi of Japan. This is the 2^nd time that Murofushi was upgraded to an Olympic medal after somebody else was caught doping.

I’m actually pretty happy with the extremely low numbers of doping cases that were caught at the Olympics. Only 9 athletes have been caught cheating (15 if you count the horses) after what has been the most heavily tested Olympics in history. There were a total of 4,770 tests: 3,801 urine tests and 969 blood tests.

(More info: USA Today)

The IOC has announced that it is going to retest all of the samples collected from the Olympic games in the wake of the positive tests found by the Tour de France for the latest version of EPO, Continuous Erythropoiesis Receptor Activator. CERA is a stamina boosting drug which was not detectable until recently. It increases the number of red blood cells produced by bone marrow, but lasts longer and requires fewer injections than older forms of EPO.

“There will most definitely be some athletes who thought they could escape being caught because they thought the test would not be ready,” said Christiane Ayotte, director of a World Anti-Doping Agency-accredited laboratory outside Montreal. “We knew it came to the market just before springtime last year and if there were positives in the Tour de France, then we think there will be positives from Beijing.

“Why the technique was not put into place in Beijing, I have no answer to give you,” she said. “But we’re not missing anything. The opportunity to have those samples retested one or two months later is great.”

The President of the IOC, Jacques Rogge, is planning on making retroactive tests a normal part of the Olympic Games in an effort to discourage doping in the future. The statute of limitations states that an athlete can be found guilty of doping for up to 8 years following an athletic contest.

Christiane Ayotte is positive that there will be more cheats found from the Beijing Games, which is a very cynical point of view that I’m afraid will turn out to be the correct one. There were only 9 positive tests out of 5000, which is less than 0.2% coming positive at the games.

(More Info: NY Times – Photo Credit: Kevork Djansezian)

In 1998, Jerome Young, Antonio Pettigrew, Tyree Washington and Michael Johnson set the American 4×400m record with a time of 2:54.20. That record is in discussions to be removed, with the 2:54.29 that was run in the 1993 World Outdoor Championships getting reinstated. Young was banned for life in 2004, and Pettigrew has recently admitted to doping as far back as 1997.

“Removing this record is the right thing to do, pure and simple,” USATF CEO Doug Logan said. “We have no interest in a record that the facts – not rumors – have exposed as being achieved by fraudulent means by at least one athlete on the team. Obviously, Tyree Washington and Michael Johnson played no part in the doping activities of others, and it is a shame that they may suffer as a result. But our message is clear: compete clean, win clean and break records clean. Or, get out of our sport and out of our record books.”

I hope that the record is removed, and I hope that athletes are taking notice. I am sure that Michael Johnson would agree; he has already returned a gold medal from the 2000 Olympics that he had won on a different team with Pettigrew. Michael Johnson will still own the American record, since he was also on the 1993 team. The real victim here is Tyree Washington.

(More Info: USATF)

Marion Jones

USATF CEO Douglas Logan has written an open letter to President Bush urging him not to pardon Marion Jones for her illegal and unethical activities over the past decade.

I can not agree with him more and I plan on writing to the white house with my thoughts on the matter. Marion Jones broke the law, she cheated in her profession, and she lied about both for years.

There should be no double standards for athletes when compared to average citizens of the United States, and pardoning Jones will make us laughing stocks in the international track community. If you think that cycling as a sport gets a bad rap, wait until the United States takes a lenient stance against an admitted doper that broke multiple US laws including involvement in bank fraud.

Pardoning her sends the wrong message, and I think that she should take responsibility for the choices that she has made.

If you would like to send a letter to the White House, you can address it to the following address:

The White House
1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW
Washington, DC 20500

If you would like to call the White House to voice your concerns, you can dial 202-456-1111 (or 202-456-6213 for TTY service.) To send a fax, dial 202-456-2461.

If you would like to send an email, address it to: comments@whitehouse.gov

The USATF has provided a sample email/letter that you can use when communicating with the White House about your thoughts on offering Marion Jones a pardon:
http://www.usatf.org/promotions/MarionJones/

Click through to read the rest of this entry for Douglas Logan’s open letter to the President.
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• This week last year, I offered some advice on what to wear to a race to prevent “severing your leg at the thigh” from chafing.
• I tried to decide if it was worth running in an ultramarathon a few weeks before my next marathon. Ultimately, I decided that yes, it was a good idea.
• I shared what I learned about velomobiles after attending a Bike Commuters’ Meetup. They look like fun toys.
• On the news front, Oscar Pistorius had some troubles after running out of his lane and getting persecuted by the IAAF. There also came down the first cyclists to get charged with doping after signing the UCI charter. The Yarmouth Clam Festival had 917 finishers and went off without any problems last year
• This week two years ago, I continued my series on icing with a description of how to ice w/an ice bag. and shared my thoughts on why you should not use weightlifting gloves or belts when you work out. I shared why it was important to determine how much you should be sleeping every night. One of my more popular articles over the past couple of years explained the differences between running on a track versus running on a treadmill.
• This week two years ago, there was some trouble in the UK with cyclists getting pushed off of their bikes by passing motorists. Three years ago was even worse, when an 88 year old hit some cyclists after ignoring the police who were controlling traffic at the Clam Festival. (Along with a 5 mile run, there is a bike race.) In Germany, a 16 year old killed one of Australia’s top cyclists when she drove into the whole team while they were training.

Track coach Trevor Graham has been banned for life from any competition sanctioned by USATF, IAAF, or the U.S. Olympic Committee.

Graham is the person that broke open the BALCO scandal by mailing a syringe of “the clear” to USADA. Numerous athletes that he has coached have been caught doping or have admitted to doping in the past, and all claim that they got their drugs from Graham. He has been convicted in a federal court and is still awaiting sentencing.

“There has been a belief out there that coaches, doctors and other people who support athletes were somehow outside the long arm of the rules,” USADA CEO Travis Tygart said in a phone interview. “This is a strong reminder that they’re not, and that we’ll use our authority to hold coaches accountable if they assist and aid athletes in doping.”

Graham has been operating under a temporary ban for the past couple of years, but I can not imagine any athlete wanting to work with him even had he not received a lifetime ban. There have been numerous race organizations, especially in Europe, that have refused to allow athletes coached by him into their events for the past few years.

Hopefully this sets a good precedent for following the rules and competing cleanly, both from an athlete perspective and from their coaches and trainers.

(More Info: USATF – ESPN)

Liliana Popescu is one of the fastest 1500m runners in the world this year, clocking 4:00.35 at at a grand prix meet in Bucharest a few days before the indoor world championships. Unfortunately, she is probably not going to be able to display her talents on the world stage.

Romania does not want to break any anti-doping rules, so they are actively banning any athlete from competing who may test positive. Liliana has reportedly tested positive to an undisclosed substance with her “A” sample, although there is not yet any results available for her “B” sample so she hasn’t actually been caught cheating yet.

I hope that her second sample comes back clean and that it was all a mistake, but if she is dirty then Romania is setting a good example. Romanian Athletes who test positive at the Olympic Games will be subjected to an estimated $156,000 fine (100,000 euros.)

(More Info: Reuters – Photo Credit: Bănăţeanul)