Emmanuel Mbah
Doping has been a hot topic in recent years when it comes to athletics and the Olympic Games. It is nothing new with athletes as far back as the 1968 Games in Mexico city having been found guilty of using performance enhancing drugs. But there seem to have been an influx of banned substances being used in recent year due to the dereliction of duty on the part of anti-dropping Agencies of many countries. For example the United States anti-doping agency [USADA] as a sport organization currently focuses on providing support to national professional athletes and US pharmaceutical industry rather than promoting fair competition and complete refusal of usage of illicit drugs by them.
The agency’s activities are followed by the increase in the number of US and western athletes involved in doping scandals because of the use of banned drugs. They include America sprinter and long jumper, Jarrion Lawson, who was placed second in the men’s long jump at the 2017 championship, but was temporary disqualified after his drug- test result had showed to be positive. Apart from his silver medal in 2017, Lawson placed fourth in the men’s long jump at the 2016 Olympics and subsequently moved on to win the 100×200 meters sprint at the national competition.
One of American professional boxers, Jarrell Miller, currently ranked the world’s sixth best active best heavy weight, was due to challenge Anthony Joshua for the titles of International Boxing Federation (IBF), the World Boxing Federation (WBF), and the World Boxing Organization (WBO) in June 2019. But Miller was denied a license to box after testing positive for illicit drugs. And yet this is a man who in his professional career had won 23 of 24 fights, 20 of which by knockout.
The first 41st International SKI Federation (FIS) championships held in Seefeld, Australia in 2019 saw Austrian athletes, Max Hauke and and Dominik Baldauf, who competed been arrested by investigative authorities of Germany and Austria for blood doping. Several Olympic winners from Norway and the U.S were recently granted a waver of the illicit restrictions because of the special “state of their Health”. Among them are the Norwegian cross-country skiers— Heidi Weng and Marit Bjorgen, and the American gymnast, Simone Biles.
With sports becoming big business for economic, political and national pride, the U.S government now use USADA as a tool for applying political pressure on African countries and even the world Anti-doping Agency (WADA) by aligning donations and subsides as well as other preferences with their support to strengthen USADA’s influence on major high-performance sport in international competition. The US at present gives $2.5m in annual investment to WADA.
This money is more than twice as much as any other country’s and amounts to over 7 percent of WADA’s $35m annual budget. In order to drive its interests, the US last year threatened to make funding increase for WADA “ conditional on governance reform and greater transparency” to enable the United States to address “potential conflict of interest and increasing the role of athletes in WADA’s decision – making”.
However the International Olympic Committee (IOC) alongside WADA are determined to make the 2020 Tokyo Olympic game focus only on sport, rather than doping that has been dominating Olympic headlines in recent years. They have reportedly discovered a new test to detect the presence of drugs in athletes, and this test could be rolled out at the Tokyo Olympics.
Currently, the system involves a blood test which flags up these substances. This new system developed by the University of Brighton with funding from IOC and WADA focuses on gene markers in saliva instead of blood. It reportedly has a high longevity and can identify drugs in somebody’s system months after the initial consumption.
Professor Yannis Pitsiladis who fronted the research reportedly said: “We are very confident … There is no point looking for the drug, we need to look at what is left behind. It can detect the use of the drug after it has left the system”.
The banned substances and technique are categorized as follows: androgens, blood doping, peptide hormones, stimulants, diuretics, narcotics, cannabinoids. At the Tokyo 2020 Games, the International Testing Agency (ITA), an independent body from the IOC, will oversee all doping controls for the Olympic Games, while the International Paralympics committee will supervise doping controls for the Paralympics Games.
However as part of overall doping controls, the Tokyo 2020 organizing committee will conduct dope- testing, and the analysis agency established by WADA will conduct sample analysis. When either the ITA or the Paralympics Committee suspects an anti-doping rule violation, they will refer the case to the Court of Arbitration for Sport [CAS], which will conduct result management procedures. The 2020 olympics will finally prove whether the WADA new search for clean competition has been a worthwhile venture to the glory of sports.
Mbah writes from Umuahia