Shot Put Gold Medallist Revoked for Doping

This was not a surprise to many of us the observers, revealed today that Nadzeya Ostapchuk, winner of the Gold Medal in London has been found to have failed a doping test for the substance Metenolone. This means New Zealands Valerie Adams has been promoted to the Gold Medal. Good job by the anti-doping team I just hope the big names are treated equally should they be caught!

http://www.11alive.com/news/article/251975/40/Shot-put-champs-gold-medal-revoked

Brilliant news for Val after the cataclysmic ballsup courtesy of the NZ team officials who didn’t register her and she only managed to scrap into the final on the back of a last minute appeal. I mean, the world champ and Olympic champ should be treated better than that but that is an internal issue which will be dealt with.

When I watched the final, i couldn’t help but notice the Belarussian’s masculine appearance, not to be cruel of course. But she’d never beaten Val since Beijing and only recently (and only in Belarus) had she started consistently churning out 21m + throws. Immediately sounded dodgy to me.

Can’t help but think really that it’s all irrelevant as had Val not had the issues dominating that day ie the will she/wn’t she be able to compete, I think she would have won anyway. That really screwed with her mind more than anything. To me justice has been served, if only they had got the results back earlier so Val could have had the dignity and honour of receiving gold in that wonderful stadium.

I really don't know why with today's advances in technology why athletes try to cheat to a medal when they know they will fail the test.

Totally pathetic. Happy that they have stripped her of the medal and hopefully a ban will follow.

LK
Despite what WADA claim, the drug testing protocols are not all that efficient, and in most cases only catch the stupid - clearly Ostapchuk was one of those, in that she was competing with the drugs still in her system. Most doping athletes do their drug taking away from the competetive arena and are competing 'clean' at the Games - this is why random OOC testing is so important.

Have to say though that I am entirely unsurprised that she was taking a testosterone-based steroid. One of my 3 most suspicious performances of the track and field part of the games (the two 1500m champions are my other prime candidates for positive tests).

Doping tests will usually only catch athletes if they are done at the residence of athletes. I still expect 90% of dopers to get away with it. Its easier in athletics when you have less tournaments to attend, undercover pharmacists will be the best way to tackle cheats.

This drugs abuser was caught by an entirely routine procedure which everybody undergoes. She was just as likely to be caught outside of competition as she was at the Games.

All this uninformed opinion that quotes wild figures such as "90% of dopers get away with it" is just so much cod philosophy, plucking numbers out of thin airr. If it was known for a fact that 90% of dopers were getting away with anything, then would have to be known who they were so that figure can be compiled.

You can't quote a statistic without data.

The testing goes on and is being altered and adjusted all the time to bring it up to date with new procedures and testing techniques as they are discovered.


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Jennifer1984 wrote:This drugs abuser was caught by an entirely routine procedure which everybody undergoes. She was just as likely to be caught outside of competition as she was at the Games.

All this uninformed opinion that quotes wild figures such as "90% of dopers get away with it" is just so much cod philosophy, plucking numbers out of thin airr. If it was known for a fact that 90% of dopers were getting away with anything, then would have to be known who they were so that figure can be compiled.

You can't quote a statistic without data.

The testing goes on and is being altered and adjusted all the time to bring it up to date with new procedures and testing techniques as they are discovered.


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Jennifer
Clearly the '90% of dopers are never caught' line is entirely unprovable. However, I think you have too much faith in the effectiveness of drug testing - yes, it is forever being improved (and the widespread introduction of blood sampling out of competition has been a big move forwards in the last decade or so), but it always has to play catch-up with new doping products and systems (i.e. greater knowledge of masking products, micro-dosing). As a cycling fan, I am well aware of many riders who have got away with doping for several years, and who only got caught by the police (in France or Germany) in possession of doping products rather than ever testing positive - the exception was for those riders caught for CERA (3rd generation EPO) use, where a test was developed and used before the riders were aware of it.

Remember also Marion Jones - 160 doping tests and never returned a positive yet was on a systematic PED programme with Conte at Balco.

Also, you have to consider the different standards of out of competition testing - UKAD has a long and very solid history of applying rigorous standards, as do several other European countries (France and Germany being particularly strong). Southern Europe are anecdotally known to turn more of a blind eye to some types of doping (ask any cycling fan about EPO and blood doping in both Italy and Spain and watch them just roll their eyes...), while OOC testing is pretty much unheard of in Jamaica and Kenya. OK, so athletes come in to other countries juristictions to compete, so the ones that are most likely to be doping are those who either compete very little or almost entirely in their own country bar major championships.

Wow... citing Marion Jones as an example of drugs testing inefficiency in 2012, when she was caught at the Sydney Games some 12 years ago is stretching things a bit.

Yes... she was caught. Eventually. She tested positive for tetrahydrogestinrone, so I guess test number 161 got her in the end.

But come on..... Don't you think things have moved on a bit since Jones activity was taking place in the 1990s..?

Yes, I do have a lot of confidence in the system. I think it is as good as it can be, but of course, it can get better and I think it will. You are quite right in the areas you mention and these are significant advances which you seem to dismiss as being easily gotten round. I think we need to agree to disagree with this notion that drugs abuse is dead easy to do, dead easy to get away with, and that the abusers are running dizzy circles round WADA with gleeful abandon. Lets agree to disagree on that one.


But taking your assertion that you know of individuals who are involved in drugs abuse, may I ask if you've shopped any of those persons you claim to know about..? I would. If I found out a competitor was taking banned substances I would be straight on to the testing authorities, putting forward my evidence and suggesting they go pay that individual a little visit.

I would have no qualms about grassing on anybody.

If you have evidence of this, other than hearsay, scuttlebutt and a "Well, it stands to reason, dunnit" opinion, then let's see it. Let's see names. Better still, let the anti-doping authorities see your names and evidence. I'm sure they'd greatly appreciate it.

Name names. Shop somebody. Go public. Become a part of the cure, otherwise it all just sounds like the sort of wild, throwaway claim anyone could make for the sake of message board one-upmanship.

I've discovered that there is a lot of that on this site.

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I dont know how many Cheats actually get away with using performance enhancing drugs, However when an athlete is caught, like the Belarussian, it does give some credibility to the system and encourages the clean athletes to stay with their sport.

Jennifer1984 wrote:Wow... citing Marion Jones as an example of drugs testing inefficiency in 2012, when she was caught at the Sydney Games some 12 years ago is stretching things a bit.

Yes... she was caught. Eventually. She tested positive for tetrahydrogestinrone, so I guess test number 161 got her in the end.

Nope. Never tested positive. She admitted eventually admitted taking THG (amongst other things) after she had denied doing so in the BALCO case. This is what she was sent to prison for in 2007.

She was stripped of her results from the 2000 Olympics and 2001 World Champs but passed every single test in-competition and out of competition during this period and every further test until her retirement in 2006. There is little indication to suggest that Jones was competing clean between 2001 and 2006 either, especially as her boyfriend, Tim Montgomery, was pretty much taking everything under the sun during a large portion of this period.

aucklandlaurie wrote:
I dont know how many Cheats actually get away with using performance enhancing drugs, However when an athlete is caught, like the Belarussian, it does give some credibility to the system and encourages the clean athletes to stay with their sport.

Agreed, it's almost a positive that people get caught as it's the best advertisement possible for not taking drugs in the first place. Shows the system works, you will (should) get caught (eventually).

TopHat24/7 wrote:

aucklandlaurie wrote:
I dont know how many Cheats actually get away with using performance enhancing drugs, However when an athlete is caught, like the Belarussian, it does give some credibility to the system and encourages the clean athletes to stay with their sport.

Agreed, it's almost a positive that people get caught as it's the best advertisement possible for not taking drugs in the first place. Shows the system works, you will (should) get caught (eventually).

About the only thing that could be done to make the current system better, would be if somehow the "first" samples could be processed earlier, When a cheat is discovered, then disqualified, the promoted ethlete misses out on a podium,Anthem,flag and more importantly a medal presentatin.

Auklandlaurie

The only way that could work would be to delay the medal ceremony for a day or two, which clearly isn't practical (as the final medal ceremonies would be a couple of days after the closing ceremony). Unfortunately, the testing takes some time (steroids a few hours, EPO and blood doping 2 or 3 days), and even the best equiped testing laboratory will only have a certain amount of equipment and staff available wo maximise efficiency.

I understand why you, as a Kiwi and compratriot of Adams (the rightful gold medallist) would feel cheated in this case, but unfortunately the logistics of the Games and of testing just don't allow this.

dummy half

Wasnt the first sample taken a couple of days before they threw the qualifying round? or did I dream that?

Her second sample (which also proved positive) was taken after the competition.

I do appreciate that if you made your living as a dug tester youd do more overtime in that fortnight than youd do for the next three years.

AL

In this case you are correct, that the first positive sample was taken prior to the competition (something I had forgotten in my response to you). Suggests to me that this may have been a targetted test on a competitor where there were strong suspicions based on recent performance improvements.

Pity the results weren't available prior to the final, but that's just the way things went in this case.

I suspect (and can probably get this confirmed if I get in touch with an ex-colleague) that the Olympic testing lab was working flat out 24/7 over the last 3 weeks and will continue to be doing so for the next week or so.

dummy_half wrote:AL

In this case you are correct, that the first positive sample was taken prior to the competition (something I had forgotten in my response to you). Suggests to me that this may have been a targetted test on a competitor where there were strong suspicions based on recent performance improvements.

Pity the results weren't available prior to the final, but that's just the way things went in this case.

I suspect (and can probably get this confirmed if I get in touch with an ex-colleague) that the Olympic testing lab was working flat out 24/7 over the last 3 weeks and will continue to be doing so for the next week or so.

I remember seeing a news story about the testing lab pre-games, and I'm pretty sure they were working shifts. They've also figured out how to store athlete's samples for up to 8 years, so if any new tests get developed in the mean time samples can be rechecked (the reason Balco got past testing 10 years ago was that there wasn't a test for their concoction at the time)

The 1st test was done the day before the comp IIRC. I guess they wanted to make sure the B samples and post-competition samples were all positive before making a call, but (given that the shotput was Monday night) they should have had a fair idea by Thursday.

Though I understand the IOC like to try to get the medal back from the cheat to represent, and the Belarussian headed for home pronto, and is claiming innocence (apparently she tested clean in Belarus 3 or 4 times in the 3 months before the Olympics) - she's using the "why use such an easily detected old drug" defence!

That said, the 2010 Ostapchuk
http://www.zimbio.com/pictures/NFH6QIkizS-/IAAF+World+Athletics+Championship+Day+Two/U1_1txNCtyP/Nadzeya+Ostapchuk definitely looks different to the 2012 version http://www.google.co.uk/imgres?hl=en&biw=1174&bih=288&tbm=isch&tbnid=0VY96gnaQwunbM:&imgrefurl=http://www.telegraph.co.uk/sport/olympics/athletics/9474287/Belarus-shot-putter-Nadzeya-Ostapchuk-calls-Olympic-doping-test-nonsense-as-Valerie-Adams-says-good-riddance.html&docid=5ojL_m6IpKzmUM&itg=1&imgurl=http://i.telegraph.co.uk/multimedia/archive/02309/Ostapchuk1_2309572b.jpg&w=620&h=388&ei=YSAqUMSKHuPR0QWovIDYCQ&zoom=1&iact=hc&vpx=57&vpy=-7&dur=1794&hovh=177&hovw=284&tx=136&ty=57&sig=109383594439951571295&page=1&tbnh=76&tbnw=121&start=0&ndsp=16&ved=1t:429,r:0,s:0,i:71

Sod testing just look at those two pictures!!

Kiwi

The 8 years storage thing has been in the protocols since at least Athens 2004, and certain of those samples have been re-tested (indeed, some were retested within a year once the CERA test was available, and resulted in one cyclist being stripped of his medal). 8 years is also the WADA statute of limitations, so if they don't strip you of the medal in 8 years you keep it no matter what doping you subsequently admit to or are found guilty of - this was why Tyler Hamilton's cycling ITT gold was stripped and reassigned last week.

There would be no specific reason for waiting for the after-competition test results before announcing the positive - indeed, it would not be that unusual for some doping products to have passed through the system in 2 or 3 days (although in this case I think the residence time for these steroids is weeks). One positive test and confirmation from the B sample (which is actually the same sample in scientific terms, but a second test aliquot used to confirm that the positive is not the result of a laboratory error - my understanding is that there has never been a positive overturned on the result of a B sample test), and the athlete is considered to have committed a doping offence.

There have been occasions of people who have been cleared after an A sample tested positive and the B sample then comes back mysteriously negative.

Bernard Lagat for one.

I think back a few years ago, the thought of a 3:26 Kenyan (now American) being busted for EPO was a little bit of a worrying thought for the IAAF. Nowadays, I think a lot of care is taken that nobody like this fails, so they don't have to drag out the lawyers and the pseudo-science in order to find a reason why synthetic EPO was in the A sample, but not the B sample.

dj
Thanks for that - one I wasn't aware of. I did wonder if my info was out of date, as I hadn't heard the claim made for a few years. I know that it was true for a long time that there had never been a negative B test after a positive A test (the Tyler Hamilton Olympics case was different, as the B test specimen was incorrectly stored making it untestable and therefore offering no way of verifying the initial positive and therefore negating the first result).

Silly of her to juice while she was competing.

None of the shot-putters are natural, thats goes without saying, but they should at least be clean during competition.

The best thing that the IOC should do is just legalise the drugs so there's always a level playing field and no controversies.

When you legalise steroids, etc, at what age would you recommend kids starting on them?

10? 12? older?

djlovesyou wrote:When you legalise steroids, etc, at what age would you recommend kids starting on them?

10? 12? older?

I imagine in some countries its even younger.

18 would be my preferred choice.

J.Benson II wrote:
The best thing that the IOC should do is just legalise the drugs so there's always a level playing field and no controversies.

Every so often someone comes out with this kind of nonsense.

DJ has already raised the problem of age and responsibility (and clearly if you allow people under 18 to compete, you must allow them to dope because otherwise it obviously isn't a level-playing field).

The other two obvious concerns are:
-ethics: PEDs are incredibly harmful in the medium and long term; you are effectively condoning people ending their lives early for your enjoyment.
-it won't be a "level playing field" it will be "who reacts best to drugs". Similar to when the swimsuits appeared, it was "whose technique is best suited to these".

Mike Selig wrote:

J.Benson II wrote:
The best thing that the IOC should do is just legalise the drugs so there's always a level playing field and no controversies.

Every so often someone comes out with this kind of nonsense.

DJ has already raised the problem of age and responsibility (and clearly if you allow people under 18 to compete, you must allow them to dope because otherwise it obviously isn't a level-playing field).

The other two obvious concerns are:
-ethics: PEDs are incredibly harmful in the medium and long term; you are effectively condoning people ending their lives early for your enjoyment.
-it won't be a "level playing field" it will be "who reacts best to drugs". Similar to when the swimsuits appeared, it was "whose technique is best suited to these".

Either way, athletes are juicing whether its allowed or not. PED usage is rife....a hell of a lot worse than many of us like to imagine.

Perhaps there should be an age limit on athletes that take part in the Olympics.

As for PED's being harmful, so is alcohol and as a former doorman, I saw on a daily basis how damaging it is to society. I'd rather ban something like that over PED's.

If Belarus doesnt hand back the gold medal, then I suggest that Valerie Adams be presented with the Olympic gold blank medallion here in Auckland, and that New Zealand fly in the Russian and the chinese place getters as well for the presentation, to achieve completeness.

Agree with that, must be sickening for her to have stood on the 2nd tier on the podium with a cheat above her & not heard the NZ anthem playing.

Apparently the Belageezer is now throwing mud at Adams saying her non-registration debacle was all down to a positive test in 2005.

Whatever she's smoking I want some!!

http://www.stuff.co.nz/sport/olympics/7480504/Ostapchuk-tries-to-smear-Valerie-Adams

I don't if I end up looking like that.

Galted wrote:I don't if I end up looking like that.

This is true, but it might help me to grow a full beard!

Its going to be a long time before Valerie gets her medal, Thats if she ever does.

Belarussia should be banned from competing until the medal is handed back.

Its a policy of the IOC that a whole country cant be banned, as it would look like the innocent are being penalised.

This is an absolute disgrace. That pumped up Paul Merton faced cheat needs to give the medal back NOW so it can be presented to the rightful winner.

Really feel for the NZ athlete who has already been denied a great moment standing proudly on the podium and now the whole debacle is being drawn out further.

Valerie Adams is probably the best non drug assisted womens shot putter ever, it could be argued that not only is she being deprived of a gold medal but a World record also.

aucklandlaurie wrote:
Valerie Adams is probably the best non drug assisted womens shot putter ever, it could be argued that not only is she being deprived of a gold medal but a World record also.

Adams is non drug assisted?

LOL

He said 'LOL'.

Can't argue with that.

djlovesyou wrote:He said 'LOL'.

Can't argue with that.

What would be the point of arguing? I'm obviously debating with people who have very little clue about top level strength competition.
Fact is, go to any serious, no-nonsense weightlifting/bodybuilding forum (such as Getbig) and ask its members if Valerie Adams (or any other world class shot-putter) is drug-free and you'll also get greeted with laughter.

Benson:
Are you saying that Valerie Adams is a drugs cheat?

He goes to the gym so therefore he knows.

Wow! Who could argue with a scientifically proven,water tight source of knowledge like that?

Yes, I go to the gym. In fact, I've been to several dozen gyms across the country and have met a few of the leading powerlifters and strength athletes in Britain.

I've watched them train, seen what they eat.........and know what they take.....and trust me guys, its a hell of a lot more than just mutli-vitamins and protein shakes.

I'll tell you something which you don't have to believe if you don't want to, but ALL elite level strength athletes take pretty large amounts of hormones. Simply relying on having great genetics or training that extra bit harder doesnt cut it at the highest level when all your competitors also train very hard and are blessed with great genes.

Sad truth is, the ones who choose to stay natural just do not reach elite, world class standards, regardless of any other factors involved.

Nadzeya Ostapchuk was juicing during compeition, something her competitors are smart enough to not do. She tried taking a stupid risk and payed the price, but please don't think for a second that she was the only one who experiments with hormones.

Benson:

I think you missed the point of the question. I wasnt talking about Ostapchuk or power lifters and strength athletes (what ever they might be ) from Britain, i was asking about Adams.

Whether Adams is "clean" or not is not the question, as she is Natural.

Are you saying that Valerie Adams is a drug cheat?

I consider shot-putting a strength sport. Therefore I consider shot-putters to be strength athletes, regardless of nationality.

Do I believe Adams uses drugs? Yes, I would be certain of it.

Do I believe Adams is cheating by using them? No, because all her rivals are also using them.

I appreciate you won't have heard of him, but what about Jacko Gill?

How young do you think he started doping?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-RWqAFaEFmk

He was 15 years old here.

I most definitely have heard of him, he hails from Aucklands North shore.

he'll be at Rio.

I think Benson saw him start getting into the performance enhancing drugs not long after he started school.

I guessed you would have heard of him.

oh dear, not sure this thread's going anywhere fast at the moment. TBH whoever said you only have to look at the pictures has a point: Ospatchuk looks more than a tad masculine (and certainly much more so than on the previous photo), which suggests something sinister.

As for the whole IAAF vs drugs issue, the Marion Jones case is indeed a terrifying example. That it took her being brought to court before being found guilty is very worrying. Have things improved since then? I'm not too convinced. I fear it will take a "Festina" like story which simply can't be brushed under the carpet for athletics to start cleaning up its act...

mad for chelsea

Thanks, so tell us why couldnt they just have given Valerie the gold medal once they had seen Ospatchuk's photo?

But shouldnt Ostapcuks sudden increase in performance since the end of May, once she had gone back to Belarus,and where all her recent drug tests been taken, rung some bells????