Testing time for Communist athletes

Press, 2 December 1978, Page 23

Testing time for Communist athletes

The suspicion that drugtaking has long been a part of the making of Eastern European sporting champions moved closer to fact in Rhodes, where the European Athletic Association confirmed the disqualification of five athletes — four Russians and one Bulgarian — at the European Championships in Prague in September.

The Russians fought hard to stop the disqualification, and failed, but two significant points in their attitude to drugtaking emerged. They announced that this year they have set up doping control at 18 domestic meetings, have caught five athlete* who

were on anabolic steroids — body-building drugs — and disqualified them; and in his confidential report the doctor who conducted the doping control in Prague said that the Russians and the Bulgarians disclosed to him that they had given their athletes a screening test before they left their countries to go to the championships. Why would they do that unless the. taking of drugs was part of their sportsmen’s athletic diet and they wanted to be sure that there was no trace of any illegal substance when it was time to go to the championships? That, or the Russians and the Bulgarians are unable to stop

the illicit use of drugs in their countries. Whatever reason you pick — and it must be one or the other — the Russian doctors slipped up in their testing. They did so by using a method of screening called radio immunassay. That was the first-stage testing method used in doping control at the Olympic Games and other major sporting events.

It is, though, not 100 per cent reliable, for the tests can throw up a negative when in fact there is a trace of drugs within the system. The guilty then can escape; in this instance all they did was escape to Prague, where

there was a larger net waiting for them. This, however, is not the moment to bid farewell to the quintet; they could be back in time for the Moscow Olympic Games of 1980. Under the international rule the athlete's country may apply for the competitor to be reinstated after a period of 18 months. If Europe has been split over this affair, with the Russians arguing long and hard to cast doubt on the testing, there is likely to be further splintering within the association if the minimum period of the ban is not extended. Western Europeans, and particularly the British,

have spent much time and money, with people such as Professor John Brooks at St Thomas's Hospital and Professor Arnold Beckett at Chelsea College leading the way in the discovery of more sophisticated testing methods. Yet this year in Prague an East German woman shot-putter won the gold medal having 12 months previously — the ban has only recently been extenddisqualified in the European Cup for taking anabolic steroids. Arthur Gold, the British president of the European Association, without making any dramatics of it, walked out of the medalpresentation ceremony. In Rhodes, he made the an-

nouncement about the disqualifications and excused his cool, clinical attitude on the ground that his fellow officials in the association know he is a hawk in the matter of hunting down those who use drugs.

The trouble is. though, that the rest of the world may not know of his stance in this matter and therefore he missed an opportunity of banging the drum in defence of those who work for more testing, calling on their sports councils and governments to underwrite this expensive business in order that sport is cleaner

and fairer than at present it appears to be.