Doping Again !

RBBOT · Futures qualifying

Doping Again !

Oakland2002 · All-time great

My impression is it improves exercise tolerance in heart failure (in Latvia). Carpet or no carpet she should retire and moderate the exercise she does.

Nice to see the testers catching up with the tested, I would see the similarities being with Gaelan Ruud not Alan Baxter, very well resourced athletes and coaches manipulating loopholes that allow legitimate use of prescription medication, having the resources to check that a loophole has been closed is a mute point. The big lass has been caught short!

The farce is we have probably been witnessing a battle between patients with asthma and cardiac failure for athletic supremacy, although we may see a late run from the endocrinologists with some growth factor analogues. I bet Michael Lewis is feeling another book coming on!! Absolute travesty that "the big short" won so little at the Oscars.

philwrig · Hall of fame

So noone believes Maria's explanation, surely a quick check of her medical records would clear it up, I personally would be lenient assuming all the medical stuff was bona fide. Tennis is far more about tennis talent than anything else, unlike athletics. 6 months for me would suffice, maximum of a year.

philwrig · Hall of fame

savva0122 wrote:
As a pharmacist, I can see no reason why she was taking this drug for medical reasons. It's medical use is for ischaemia (angina) and she has not got that. It's not licensed anywhere other that Lithuania and Russia and the only reasonable suggestion is that she was taking this as a performance enhancer- albeit legal up to 1.1.16- I can't see why her "family doctor" would give her this for any other reason.

I guess she was stupid to get caught but think this is different to taking "supplements"- this is a prescription drug with definite effects not being used for its legitimate purpose.

I don't think Baxter's case is comparable- his was a definite, one off, transgression Borne of ignorance and the product he used has such an infinitesimal amount of stimulant it would produce no effect, particularly in an elite athlete.

The medical use looks far more wide ranging than just heart issues, but I'm no doctor.

wolf · Tennis legend

philwrig wrote:
savva0122 wrote:
As a pharmacist, I can see no reason why she was taking this drug for medical reasons. It's medical use is for ischaemia (angina) and she has not got that. It's not licensed anywhere other that Lithuania and Russia and the only reasonable suggestion is that she was taking this as a performance enhancer- albeit legal up to 1.1.16- I can't see why her "family doctor" would give her this for any other reason.

I guess she was stupid to get caught but think this is different to taking "supplements"- this is a prescription drug with definite effects not being used for its legitimate purpose.

I don't think Baxter's case is comparable- his was a definite, one off, transgression Borne of ignorance and the product he used has such an infinitesimal amount of stimulant it would produce no effect, particularly in an elite athlete.
The medical use looks far more wide ranging than just heart issues, but I'm no doctor.

Come on, don't be naive it was used to enhance performance.

I agree with the posts from Savva and Oakland. Hence my question did she require a TUE to use it previously?

EDIT: Okay that's not what I said, used wrong acronym!

-- Edited by wolf on Tuesday 8th of March 2016 12:41:24 AM

philwrig · Hall of fame

Also if she was cheating the system, why didn't she come off the medication earlier to avoid this, not worth it taking risks when she's worth 10's of millions of pounds. Image and future earnings wrecked forever.

philwrig · Hall of fame

wolf wrote:
philwrig wrote:
savva0122 wrote:
As a pharmacist, I can see no reason why she was taking this drug for medical reasons. It's medical use is for ischaemia (angina) and she has not got that. It's not licensed anywhere other that Lithuania and Russia and the only reasonable suggestion is that she was taking this as a performance enhancer- albeit legal up to 1.1.16- I can't see why her "family doctor" would give her this for any other reason.

I guess she was stupid to get caught but think this is different to taking "supplements"- this is a prescription drug with definite effects not being used for its legitimate purpose.

I don't think Baxter's case is comparable- his was a definite, one off, transgression Borne of ignorance and the product he used has such an infinitesimal amount of stimulant it would produce no effect, particularly in an elite athlete.
The medical use looks far more wide ranging than just heart issues, but I'm no doctor.
Come on, don't be naive it was used to enhance performance.
I agree with the posts from Savva and Oakland. Hence my question did she require a TUE to use it previously?
EDIT: Okay that's not what I said, used wrong acronym!

-- Edited by wolf on Tuesday 8th of March 2016 12:41:24 AM

I would rather look at it with an open eye and not to prejudge it, if further evidence reveals that Maria knowingly took performance enhancing drugs, then fair enough throw the book at her.

PockyTastic · Futures level

philwrig wrote:
Also if she was cheating the system, why didn't she come off the medication earlier to avoid this, not worth it taking risks when she's worth 10's of millions of pounds. Image and future earnings wrecked forever.

My feelings exactly. She was planning on retiring in the near future, why would she jeopardise all her earnings and business interests for 12 months of cheating when she wasnt going to be able to play much due to injury? I may well be considered naive by many on here but she actually sounds genuine.

Oakland2002 · All-time great

One could argue until the Autumn of last year she was playing by the rules of professional sport, doing everything she could to win, nothing is black or white, where there is an advantage of being in the grey, get into the grey. It is ubiquitous there are far too many athletes optimising their physiology by using medication that they wouldn't use if they weren't athletes, outside the spirit of competition definitely and into the grey as far as cheating/playing within the rules.

Tennis is a skill sport played by individuals who are physiologically optimized, some rely more on the later than others. There is conditioning and conditioning. Hopefully further increase in sophistication of testing will protect athletes from themselves and those that seek to manipulate their performance. At the highest level you can't compete unless conditioned. I would have stuck my neck out and say that it is far more likely that the tall athletes are more likely to be clean but Maria has mucked that theory up. In reality there is only so much cheating and manipulation the public will tolerate and continue to pay for by watching. I have never Ben interested in weightlifting or body building and am over my threshold and no longer enthused by athletics, road cycling and rugby.

In this case the grey has been cleared up, the rules changed and a player caught, why she got caught is difficult to fathom. Was it arrogance? she seemed pretty relaxed at her press conference, owned up and will take the penealty on the chin, there will be no retrospective expunging of her record before last Autumn. Got to be honest I was gob smacked that this was her announcement and Maria is continuing to play by the rules as interpreted when intent on optimizing every potential advantage including the rules themselves.

wimdledont · Challenger level

I'm more disconcerted by what she has done legally, than what has now been declared to be illegal.

I don't buy the explanation that "Sugarpova" FFS was concerned about a family history of diabetes. It looks for all the world as if she was taking a prescription medicine, intended to treat one condition, which had significant performance-enhancing side-effects; which raises a question mark over all of her career, including a full Grand Slam.

Rather than playing catch-up, I'd like to see WADA change the system so that all athletes must proactively declare their usage of all prescription drugs, whether or not those drugs have already been identified as performance-enhancing.

The picture that is currently emerging is that the Russians have been aware that this drug is performance-enhancing for a decade; in the absence of proactive declarations of usage, it has taken WADA that long to realise the prevalence of its usage, and to clamp down.

If all currently non-prohibited drugs were declared, it would in future take a lot less time to identify those prescriptions which look to be giving a competitive advantage; and it would allow WADA to specifically warn individual athletes who are about to fall foul of a change in the rules.

baxi2 · Lower Club Player

Surely those looking after her must shoulder some blame ? Excuse the pun!

Max Eisenbud and IMG must have known what she was taking and the way they manage her you would have thought they would have been checking the doping list every time it was updated. Following numerous other scandals ............ IMG are beginning to look less than "Rosy White "

The Optimist · ATP qualifying

I am unaware how this drug relates to diabetes prevention (Sharapova cites the disease is common in her family), but one of its lesser uses is to rectify magnesium deficiency which is, per Miss S, the reason she was originally prescribed it. I'm open minded. If it was properly prescribed for medicinal use, then I have some sympathy, although I do find it hard to believe that someone in her camp isn't charged with checking every change to the regulations. Then again, if you know you take nothing illegal and have no intention to cheat, maybe such things don't seem so important.

As for taking old titles away....why? She won them whilst taking nothing illegal. And as the substance was not illegal, it was not tested for and may well have been taken by many of her competitors. Djokovic famously recovers in some 'special chamber' which is currently legal. If at some future time such chambers were declared illegal, would it mean he had won all his titles by cheating? As Oakland says, there is a grey area where conditioning and doing everything legal to maximise your abilities is concerneed.

Anyway, Nike have already suspended her sponsorship. I find it hard to believe she would have risked so much in this part of her career for possibly minimal gains.

vohor · Grand Slam Champion

Agree with the last 2 posts: MS was big business and had a team of advisors ; it is her advisors who have surely screwed this up in letting her carry on using this stuff; if it was legal prior to 1.1.16 no re-writing of history is justified. I only ever watched MS matches with the sound on mute and I do wish the tennis authorities had clamped down on her (and the other screamers) years ago; but I believe she should be given the minimum penalty on this occasion....the AO is her one and only tournament appearance since the rule change; she has walked into this positive test unwittingly.

Oakland2002 · All-time great

Wimbledont, I am sure they do have to declare all prescription medication and supplements. If not I agree definitely why not? There is also leeway around the degree of evidence required to show a drug is needed for medicinal purposes. If your FEV1 is within the normal range at rest should you be prescribed asthma medication and be allowed to compete internationally when so many gold medalists use it compared to the general population?

I have absolutely no problem in its use in games lessons or in recreational sport but as soon as money becomes part of the equation non. I am sure if joint replacements confered an advantage we would see a completely different cohort of athletes. Injectable fast twitch myocytes to allow slow kids to do better at games. Sorry if you can live a normal life without it you shouldn't use it in competition.

Interesting to see the different lines of optimisation being utilised, North America, BALCO all about subtle hormonal manipulation and analogues, here we are seeing potential optimisation of cardiac function and oregan asthma medication and high dose topical steroid. Tennis is brutal there is no living outside the top 150 we cannot be too surprised at the lengths plays will go to to get there.

-- Edited by Oakland2002 on Tuesday 8th of March 2016 07:49:46 AM

wimdledont · Challenger level

In addition to a ban, other sports strip previously won titles and medals, etc, from proven drugs cheats. While the current case is not clear-cut, due to the recent change in the classification, I think that, in the event of a clear violation of doping rules, then tennis should be considering going back and revising the results of any guilty party over the previous 12 months, and awarding a win, and the corresponding ranking points, to any player who has lost a match to a drugs cheat, over the previous 12 months, which counts to their current ranking.

I also think that Sharapova should be expected to pay back her prize money from the Oz Open, and (more arguably in this case) all other tournaments from the previous 12 months, and that each of her beaten opponents should be awarded extra prize money, for having won one additional round each. They are the injured parties.

In most cases, this would likely result in personal bankruptcy for the guilty, and would prevent their return to the sport; which would be a very fine result, in my opinion.