Olympic Committee no longer cares about Russian doping - Politics Forum.org | PoFo

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#15212378
Telegraph wrote:
The Olympics have abandoned any sense of fair play - it is time athletes considered a boycott

The Games deserve so much better than the calibre of people who run it

It was fitting that the American team reacted to Kamila Valieva’s reprieve with barely-concealed fury. After all, their female figure skaters have yet to receive their silver medals for last week’s team event, never mind any clarification on whether Russia might be forced to give up the gold. Now, the Court of Arbitration for Sport has cleared the 15-year-old Valieva to line up in the individual competition after a positive test for a banned heart medication, despite offering no details as to how, why or by whom the drug was administered. This is not just a muddying of the waters by the International Olympic Committee, under whose jurisdiction Cas falls. It is an abdication of its duty to ensure fair play.

The Americans’ statement in response was damning. “This appears to be another chapter in the systemic and pervasive disregard for clean sport by Russia,” it said. “Athletes have the right to know they are competing on a level playing field. Unfortunately, that right is being denied.”

Two messages are abundantly clear from the Cas ruling. The first is that the Olympic movement, despite a third consecutive Winter Games becoming engulfed by stories of Russian doping, will do anything to avoid embarrassing Moscow on the global stage. The IOC is the organisation that reinstated Russia to the fold within 72 hours of the Pyeongchang Games concluding, heedless of the damage that the country’s state-sponsored doping racket had inflicted on its event’s image. Against the backdrop of that vast malfeasance, it can afford to represent Valieva’s predicament as a mere bump in the road.

The second worry is that IOC spokesman Mark Adams, whenever he is pressed on why Russia are allowed at these Beijing Olympics at all, deflects, insisting it is a discussion for another day. This opaque way of doing business is mirrored in Cas’ handling of Valieva’s case. In announcing the ruling that the teenager could stay and challenge for the individual title, Matthieu Reeb, the court’s director-general, took no questions from journalists. He offered nothing about why Valieva deserved dispensation as a minor and nothing about the increasingly urgent question of why her positive sample went unreported for 40 days.

In defending the Cas decision, Reeb argued that “preventing the athlete from competing at the Olympics would cause her irreparable damage in these circumstances”. It is an unconvincing logic. Surely it will do Valieva greater harm in the long run if, as remains a real possibility, the medals that she wins in Beijing are taken away from her at a later date. The move to let her carry on as if nothing has happened benefits nobody. It does not help the athlete, it does not help her rivals and it emphatically does not help the millions of viewers who would like some guarantees as to the sanctity of what they are watching.


For how much longer can Russia’s opponents tolerate them being handed effectively a free pass? The sense of unease at the Cas verdict is overwhelming: Canada characterises it as “extremely unfortunate” for the athletes, while the World Anti-Doping Agency (Wada) points out that exceptions are not supposed to be made for mandatory provisional suspensions, even for minors such as Valieva. If even Cas is not inclined to stand up for athletes alarmed at Russia’s behaviour, it begs the questions of what recourse they have left. The nuclear option would be for them to stage a boycott in protest, although the chances are that the IOC would mete out a stronger punishment than any yet shown to Russia.

The Olympics deserve so much better than the calibre of the people who run it. Beijing is playing host to one of the finest crops of women’s figure skating talent in living memory, but the contest is being ruined by grubby political games. For the IOC, the spirit of fair play is trumped by the power of patronage. The laments by the US Olympic Committee about a loss of integrity mean little, ultimately, against Thomas Bach’s apparent resolve to ingratiate himself with Vladimir Putin.

Any time the IOC confronts an issue of this diplomatic magnitude mid-Games, it sees to it that it becomes somebody else’s problem. Adams reiterated on Monday that it wanted Wada to investigate Valieva’s entourage. Except the IOC controls Wada. It controls Cas, too. This is very much its concern, and one it could take a lead on by doing what it should have done four years ago - kicking out Russia out of the Olympics. Even Dick Pound, a senior IOC executive and the inaugural Wada president, suggests that the Russians’ conduct has become so incorrigible that there is a case to ban them for two to three Games.

But never mind banning an entire nation, Olympic organisers cannot even a ban a figure skater who has tested positive for an endurance-enhancing drug. Their approach is simply to kick the can down the road, until such time as the attention of the world moves on. Intriguingly, the only legal case that the IOC took out was against the Russian Anti-Doping Agency. It was left to Wada and the International Skating Union to launch proceedings in Cas against the Russian Olympic Committee and Valieva herself.

In the meantime, Russian athletes continue to cut a swathe across the snow and ice of Beijing. They already have 18 medals, the second most overall. Another gold is now highly likely to be added by Valieva. But still the IOC says nothing about the perversity of this situation. Just as it refused to countenance Wada’s recommendation that Russia should be banned from the Rio Olympics for their doping regime in Sochi, it is engaged once more in a grim conspiracy of silence.
#15212389
CAS Secretary General Matthieu Reeb said that banning the athlete based on a drug test in December is detrimental to her future given the young age of the athlete who should be protected under current regulations. She was allowed to compete for now because it could be a false-positive result by a sloppy Swedish lab which took two months to come up with the test result or a legal medication she took was contaminated with trimetazidine. WADA issued an advisory that trimetazidine could show up in urine samples as a false positive for lomerizine, a migraine medication that is permitted. American swimmer Madisyn Cox successfully proved that a vitamin supplement she had been taking was contaminated with trimetazidine. It takes more time to investigate this matter further. At a CAS hearing, her mother claimed that her grandfather is medicated with trimetazidine for treating angina and he may have caused the substance to end up in Kamila's body. He takes his granddaughter to training sessions every day or stays with her at times while her parents are not at home.

ANALYSIS AND REPORTING OF TRIMETAZIDINE FINDINGS
The World Anti-Doping Agency wishes to draw the attention of the Laboratories to the following remarks and instructions on the analysis and reporting of trimetazidine (TMZ).

The detection of TMZ [1-(2,3,4-trimethoxybenzyl)piperazine] in urine may result from the metabolism of lomerizine [1-[bis(4-fluorophenyl)methyl-4-(2,3,4-trimethoxybenzyl)piperazine], a permitted drug used for the treatment of migraine.1,2,3

https://www.wada-ama.org/sites/default/ ... zidine.pdf
Last edited by ThirdTerm on 15 Feb 2022 21:09, edited 2 times in total.
#15212501
ThirdTerm wrote:At a CAS hearing, her mother claimed that her grandfather is medicated with trimetazidine for treating angina and he may have caused the substance to end up in Kamila's body. He takes his granddaughter to training sessions every day or stays with her at times while her parents are not at home.


:eh:
#15212561
Sandzak wrote:Western and Chinese Athletes commit also doping they jus use new substances who are not not banned.


I think steroids should be legal. Olympia is the perfect testing ground for new substances.


"My best doper beat your best doper!" :lol:
#15212564
As regular forum users will know I'm no sheeple and don't blindly follow every fad of the pharmaceutical-sickness industrial complex but, we have to face realities. Lance Armstrong may have owed his life to following the science. We just don't know. But what we do know is that he owed his Tour de France victories to following the science, to the fact he was prepared to follow the medical experts. And of course when his titles were taken away from they were only given to another cyclist that had followed the science, listened to the medical experts and had cheated but managed to avoid getting caught.

"Cheating" is inevitable in high status first past the post competitions. In sport we just have to accept this. I can't see how you could have a 100 metres event based on proportional representation. But in politics, if you love "firstt past the post" that's fine, that's your choice, what ever entertains you, but please don't start whining about the inevitable negative effects of your chosen system.
#15212567
Russia committed state-sanctioned doping on an industrial scale. US athletes have committed numerous violations of fair play in their hypercompetative outlook bordering on psychosis.

But the sad fact is that doping with either anabolic steroids or performance-enhancing drugs is rife within professional and international sports, to the point of singling out any one country is misleading.

"As evidenced by athletes who were previously thought to be clean and weren't, people are willing and able to dope at large scale," said Thomas Hildebrandt, a performance-enhancement researcher and associate professor of psychiatry at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York City. "I think we have to assume that the Russians got caught but other programs are doing similar things. And I think it would be foolish of anyone to think otherwise."


Why Is It So Easy to Cheat at the Olympics?
#15212580
@noemon @Rancid

I feel bad for that 15 year old Russian kid which the state of Russia was doping for these Olympic competitions. They have victimized this child. They use her and then discard her. The people who were involved in doping this 15 year old kid need to be facing a stiff prison sentence for preying upon a minor. But, it would be unfair to just single out a few individuals. The whole system there in Russia is state sponsored and corrupt. You cannot victimize a child like this. I view it as a crime against humanity.
#15212585
Two legal substances, Hypoxen and L-carnitine, used to improve heart function were listed on an anti-doping control form filled out for Kamila Valieva. The leaked document describes Valieva’s mother as arguing that the skater’s grandfather was a regular user of trimetazidine, which would explain how it got into her system. Kamila must have been inadvertently exposed to trimetazidine while sharing glasses or cups with her sick grandfather. The dose is one tablet of 35mg of trimetazidine twice daily during meals. The concentration in the sample was compatible with contamination. Her Olympic sample was clean, while her December sample submitted for the national competition tested positive, which was likely caused by “accidental contamination” in an isolated incident.

Image

https://dossier-center.appspot.com/wp-c ... 793l3d.pdf


C. How the Prohibited Substance entered Mr Puerta’s Body
26. The ITF Tribunal found, on the balance of probabilities, that Mr Puerta was contaminated by his wife’s Effortil and that this occurred during the period of about one to two days prior to the final at a time and place unknown, and with a dose that is unknown, and in circumstances that are unknown save that the source was Mrs Puerta’s medicine.
27. This finding appeared to the ITF Tribunal as more likely to be the case than the theory of contamination through the use of Mr Puerta’s glass by Mrs Puerta for her medication. The Tribunal noted that Mr Puerta did not prove all the factual circumstances in which etilefrine entered his system, but he proved the source of etilefrine: “he has done just enough to discharge the onus on him of showing on the balance of probabilities how the Prohibited Substance entered his system. In the present case it is the source of the Prohibited Substance that is the most important feature”.
28. Mr Puerta challenged this aspect of the decision as being “unevidenced, misconceived, illogical, illegitimate, and not properly put”. He claims that the etilefrine entered his system as a result of his inadvertent and unknowing ingestion of the liquid residue of his wife’s Effortil when he re-used his glass in the cafeteria just before the start of the final match. Additionally, he asserts that neither the ITF nor the ITF Tribunal was able to propose an “evidenced alternative explanation” for the inadvertent ingestion of the substance.

https://jurisprudence.tas-cas.org/Share ... s/1025.pdf
#15212670
@Rugoz Like this one?
An Olympic Hopeful Blames A Burrito For Her Positive Drug Test
https://www.npr.org/2021/06/15/10066221 ... -drug-test


The Russian wasn't a black woman so that's probably why they let it fly. That said, I think the IOC is a really corrupt organization(sorta like FIFA). So nothing they do surprises me.

Is this call rubbish? Absolutely.
#15213526
There is some debate over whether this substance even is all that useful in enhancing athletic performance.
Trimetazidine has been on the World Anti-Doping Agency’s list of prohibited substances since 2014. However, WADA noted in a 2018 technical letter that an athlete may test positive for trimetazidine after taking lomerizine, a drug that’s allowed for use for the treatment of migraines. As for why this drug is banned and may help with athletic performance, Alan offers this explanation: “If your heart gets more oxygen, theoretically, it can enhance your performance overall.”

But it’s not entirely clear how much trimetazidine actually helps boost athletic performance. “In some studies, it has been shown to reduce the episodes of angina and improve exercise time in patients,” Dr. Tadwalkar says. But that’s in people who already have cardiac issues—not your average person whose heart already works well, he points out.

Dr. Tadwalkar says that there is “a little bit of disagreement” on how much trimetazidine could help someone from an athletic performance standpoint, adding that “there is evidence that shows this may be helpful.” Still, he says, “there is some thinking that it can increase stamina for athletes, and there is definitely a concern that this may create an unfair advantage.” https://www.prevention.com/health/a39077405/what-is-trimetazidine-kamila-valieva/
Typically, when used as a performance-enhancing drug, trimetazidine starts to work within hours of swallowing a single dose, and the clinical effects can last for days. It may be detected in athletes’ urine for several days after their last use of the drug.

But it might actually not have much of an effect on young and healthy adults or athletes.

“This is unlikely to improve performance in young athletes like [Valieva],” Joyner said. “The heart of a person like this is working at peak efficiency and their muscles can burn all the glucose you need, it’s really unlikely to have many performance-enhancing benefits at all.”

Some doctors even suggest the drug could hurt her.5 While trimetazidine can optimize the heart’s metabolic function under stress, there are also risks to taking the drug.

Side effects of trimetazidine include gastrointestinal distress, tremors, and weakness, according to Johnson-Arbor. There could also be severe adverse symptoms after long-term use of the drug, including Parkinsonian symptoms (a disorder that causes muscle stiffness, involuntary muscle movements, and difficulty walking).6 Less severe side effects include headache, rashes, nausea, dizziness, and vomiting. https://www.verywellhealth.com/olympics-banned-drug-5218884
And furthermore, current NATO member Poland, among other countries, has also had doping scandals related to drugs such as this.
Banned metabolic modulators have been used by cyclists, weightlifters, boxers, wrestlers, skiers and other athletes from dozens of countries including Russia, Poland, Columbia, Belgium and Germany. https://edition.cnn.com/2022/02/10/sport/trimetazidine-banned-drug-explainer-spt-intl/index.html
I personally feel that the west is looking to find an excuse for how an Eastern European girl outshone their best athletes. Some competitors are such suspicious bad sports that they will grasp at straws just to try to defame those they lose to, especially when they lose to a woman. Case in point, the lip balm incident concerning the Hungarian chess master, Anna Rudolf.
#15213530
The Guardian wrote:
At the start, a stumble. At the end, tears. In between, another brush with perfection.

And somehow, after a week of extraordinary personal tumult and torment, the 15-year-old Kamila Valieva did what she has been trained to do since she began skating at three: deliver when it matters.

Despite the positive drugs test. Despite the intense media scrutiny. Despite staying up at 3am to follow her court of arbitration for sport appeal hearing before a late reprieve. She still delivered.

At the halfway stage of the women’s single skating competition, Valieva leads with a score of 82.16, just under two points clear of her compatriot Anna Shcherbakova. But a question lingered at Beijing’s Capital Indoor Stadium like a pungent smell. Should she be here at all following her positive test for the banned angina drug trimetazidine?

The US coach Adam Rippon, who won Olympic bronze four years ago and now coaches Valieva’s competitor Mariah Bell, was the most vocal critic. “I don’t know how the Olympics recovers from this,” he said. “It is shocking and it is disappointing. I don’t think ever in the history of the Olympics somebody with a positive test has been allowed to compete.

Like many, he expressed sympathy for Valieva – before suggesting her entourage, led by her coach Eteri Tutberidze, was to blame. “All of our hearts are breaking that this is a 15-year-old girl,” he said. “It feels like she was taken advantage of and given this drug that she had no business taking.”

Then came a twirl of the knife. “What this says is that the team around her are child abusers,” Rippon said. “The only thing they care about is performance, and not the health and well being of their athletes. They are a factory that pumps out children who can compete, up to a certain point. It doesn’t feel like the coaches involved in the ladies’ program are coaches at all, but dog trainers; they’re running a circus. They shouldn’t be here at the Olympic Games. They’re clowns.

On Saturday Tutberidze had said the situation was “very controversial and difficult” but added: “I want to say that I am absolutely sure that Kamila is innocent and clean.”

Rippon’s words were striking, but they did not exist in a vacuum. Long before Valieva stepped so gracefully on to the ice, the British skater Nastasha McKay was asked about the Russian being allowed to compete.

McKay is usually so diplomatic she could easily find a job in the foreign office. Not this time. “I wish it was a level playing field and it’s not,” she replied.

When invited to express sympathy for Valieva, she preferred to devote her words to those she felt deserved it. “I have sympathy for whoever will be on the podium who won’t be receiving their medals,” she said. “It’s the most important part of the Olympics and they won’t get that chance.”

Soon after the Swedish skater Josefin Taljegard made a similar point, albeit more subtly. “I think fair play is important,” she said. “Something inside me thinks it’s sad. I try to be a good role model. I just want everyone to know that figure skating is a lovely sport. These negative things take away from that.”

Neither Valieva nor Tutberidze stopped to speak to the world’s press after competing. But Shcherbakova, who is also coached by Tutberidze, did. When asked by the Guardian about her coach’s methods, she mounted a qualified defence.

“I have been in her group since I was nine,” she said. “And, if I am not changing my coach, it means that I like this coach. We are very fruitful working together, we are achieving a lot as you can see. And I believe this speaks more than words.”

Earlier on Tuesday it emerged that Valieva’s team had suggested that her positive drugs test may have come from a contaminated glass of water that contained traces of her grandfather’s heart medication.

The International Olympic Committee member Denis Oswald confirmed the 15-year-old Russian’s explanation for her positive test was “contamination, which happened with a product her grandfather was taking”.

The Russian newspaper Pravda said Valieva’s lawyer Anna Kozmenko made a similar argument at a Cas hearing on Sunday.

“There can be completely different ways how it got into her body,” Kozmenko is reported to have said. “For example, grandfather drank something from a glass, saliva got in, this glass was somehow later used by an athlete. Or the drug lay down on some surface, traces remained, the drug lay down on this surface, which the athlete then drank.”

That explanation certainly raised plenty of eyebrows here in Beijing. But at the same time, some of the more excitable criticism of Cas’s decision to allow Valieva to compete does not seem justified either.

Neither Valieva nor Russia have received a diamanté-emblazoned get-out-of-jail-free card. She still has to face justice for her failed drugs test. Cas’s decision is a stay of execution, not a pardon.

But the overriding image of this night was of Valieva, with the world’s gaze and pressure weighing down on her, once again showing the talent that many think makes her the best female skater in history.

True, it wasn’t a perfect routine. No sooner had the opening bars of In Memoriam by Kirill Richter ended than Valieva wobbled and came dangerously close to falling on her first jump, the triple axel. Yet she was able to refocus and scored top marks on her remaining elements.

Valieva rightly now goes into Thursday’s free skating programme as a huge favourite for gold. The tragedy for her is that the chances of an Olympic medal around her neck hang increasingly by a sequin’s thread.
#15213582
Rugoz wrote:Every doper has some stupid story ready about how the drug got into their system. You don't accidentially swallow a pill of your grandfather. Silly.


She probably shared his food and drink, as is common among close family members. Ever see the episode of Seinfeld where Elaine triggers a false positive by simply eating too many poppy seeds? It's realistic.

Things haven't gotten too much better since the 90s.

Edit after reading Noemon's post:
There can be completely different ways how it got into her body,” Kozmenko is reported to have said. “For example, grandfather drank something from a glass, saliva got in, this glass was somehow later used by an athlete. Or the drug lay down on some surface, traces remained, the drug lay down on this surface, which the athlete then drank.”


Yep. This is known to produce false positives, as I said there's a classic Seinfeld episode about Elaine testing false positive for opium. Heck if you eat too many Cherry Ripes or other alcohol containing chocolate you can false positive a breathalyzer due to trace amounts of rum remaining in your mouth.
#15213584
Just because you saw it on Seinfeld, doesn't mean it's a real thing, @colliric. These excuses, and wives tales of someone eating a banned substance in their food, are just that. There is no basis in fact or reality.


Athletes who test positive for banned substances should be banned from competing. Period.
#15213590
Godstud wrote:Just because you saw it on Seinfeld, doesn't mean it's a real thing, @colliric. These excuses, and wives tales of someone eating a banned substance in their food, are just that. There is no basis in fact or reality.


https://www.winchesterhospital.org/heal ... e?id=13837

Large amounts of poppy seeds would need to be eaten to cause a positive (opioid) test. Good tests can tell poppy seeds apart from opiates.

If you are mistakenly found positive for drug use, think about whether you have taken any substances known to cause false-positives


It's real. The fact that people don't believe it's real, even when confronted with evidence is the reason they devoted an entire episode to it, because it's funny.

Eating too many Cherry Ripes or other Rum laced products is known to cause positive alcohol tests because of the residual rum left in your mouth, that then gets expelled when you blow on the breathalyzer.
#15213591
@colliric The athletes KNOW what to avoid. Pretending they got a drug from a pork kebab they ate a few days ago is utter stupidity. Just because it has happened, does not make it a blanket excuse.

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