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World Anti-Doping Agency (Wada): Wada Happening with Drugs in Sport?
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Scientific advances threaten to detect all drugs cheats. © iStock.com
Sports' governing bodies decide themselves whether to sign up to the Wada code. This code sets a 'strict liability' rule, which means that all professional sports people are responsible for any banned substances found in their bodies. It also sets the punishments that should be applied to any sports person who fails a drugs test: athletes should be suspended for two years for their first offence and banned for life for their second.
As a result of FIFA's (football's world governing body), announcement of its intention to accept the Wada code in January 2004, cycling is the last main Olympic sport that remains outside the code. All winter and summer Olympic sports can be expected to sign up, as failure to do so would bring into question a sport's entry into the Olympic Games.
In sports where testing is routinely carried out, such as track and field athletics, drugs cheats tend to be discovered more frequently than in other sports that test less rigorously. This means that, not only do more track and field athletes seem to take performance enhancing drugs, but also that there are greater temptations to try to mask the use of performance enhancers.
The development of tetrahydrogestrinone (THG), an anabolic steroid altered to avoid detection in any drugs test, can be seen to be a response by the cheats to the use of more rigorous testing. But recent advances in testing procedures mean that it is now possible to detect THG; the first wave of athletes testing positive for THG has already arrived. Dwain Chambers, prospective UK sprint medallist at the Athens Olympics in 2004, failed this test in August 2003. He has subsequently been penalised with a two year ban from the sport.