Doping at the Rugby World Cup

[Libertine Seguros]

While there is undoubtedly plenty of PED use in rugby, I think it's stretching it to say that this was what caused the likes of England and Scotland to beat Argentina and Romania. Romania don't have a league or any of the resources, PED or otherwise, to compete with established rugby nations, while Argentina have plenty of teams in the major European leagues who probably do have access to those things but not the strength in depth, plus you have the problem of not playing as many internationals therefore less experience playing as a unit. Many of the Romanian players simply don't have the experience of playing against top sides week in week out.

It's like saying that it was clearly PED abuse that allowed Germany to beat Australia at the 2010 football world cup. Now, there is probably a stronger chance that the German team had access to top PEDs than the Aussies, for sure, but the quality of the Bundesliga compared to the Aussie domestic leagues and the quality of coaching through normal, non-drug-related means is always going to be superior since there's more competition since football is a completely ingrained sport in Germany and the #1 sport, whereas it faces stiff competition from other sports in Australia and is not the top priority of the nation's sport fanatics or officialdom.

 

[craig1985]

why are sports players heads getting bigger?

Will never find a future pro sport athlete, especially a 7 footer, with a head the size of Kareem Abdul JAbbar.

Look at Shaq and Dwight Howard.

blackcat, why aren't you working for WADA?

 

[Catwhoorg]

http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport2/hi/rugby_union/16090014.stm

An unnamed player failed a drugs test during the Rugby World Cup, the International Rugby Board has revealed.

The player's identity has been withheld but the IRB confirmed he plays for a nation that failed to qualify for the quarter-finals of the competition.

The positive test was returned following a match in the final round of the pool phase

 

[Brad Lamb]

I can only provide evidence for doping in rugby for the UK.

For those that don’t know drug testing in the UK is carried out by UKAD – anti doping in sport. Each positive is uploaded on their website under the violations link. Also included in the upload is the drug found in the sample, date of ban, details of the positive and the process/protocol administered by UKAD and the sports federation towards the athlete.

You can view the positives here: http://www.ukad.org.uk/violations

As you can see, the majority of UK positives come from either Rugby League and/or Rugby Union. Yet interestingly, the guilty players tend not to be the big hitters likely to be found playing for the home nation teams or in the recent World Cup.

Also, considering there are over 100 pages of positives, it is incredible that the UK media have failed to report to the general public (with the exception of a few cases) this information, nor has there been any real invesitigation into why certain sports are continuing to have their athletes test positive.

Yet, if someone from Sky were to test positive, no doubt it would front page news. Funny that!