Drug abusers caught out

Press, 10 February 1988, Page 44

Drug abusers caught out

NZPA-Reuter Cologne The number of positive dope tests on sportsmen analysed by one of the world’s leading laboratories rose sharply last year for the fourth consecutive year. Professor Manfred Donike, one of the world’s top experts on doping in sport and head of a Cologne laboratory, said 1987 produced a record 111 positive results — 4.41 per cent of those tests done at domestic and international events. The figure represented an increase of more than 400 per cent since 1983 when only 0.90 per cent of 1535 tests analysed were positive. In 1986, 3.65 per cent of the 2165 tests analysed — most of them from events held in West Germany — proved positive. But Professor Donike said the increase did not necessarily mean the battle against the use of drugs in sport was being lost. “Doping controls have sparked off a learning process among sports federations but we are still a long way from the solution of the problem,” he told a news conference. Professor Donike said last year’s figures were heavily influenced by a dramatic rise in positive tests among body builders. He said 71 of 236 tests on body builders, almost a third, showed evidence of drugs, mostly anabolic steroids. He said tests on body builders had begun only recently and he was sure the results would have a deterrent effect, leading to a big improvement this year.

Professor Donike said the biggest problem in sport was the increasing use of anabolic steroids which accounted for three-quarters of the drugs found. “There is a changing pattern with dope in sport,” he said. “Twenty years ago just about all cyclists used amphetamines. Now their use has virtually vanished. Instead we have the growing use of steroids in many sports.” Professor Donike said he was alarmed to find, for the first time, five cases involving probenecide, a drug used to mask anabolic steroids in the body. He said there was evidence that probenecide had been widely used in the United States over the past year or two and that sportsmen at the Pan American Games and world athletics championships in Rome last year had employed it to avoid detection of steroids. The drug was banned by the International Olympic Committee only last September.