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Doping in the Enduro World Series

May 26, 2009
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The EWS got under the UCI flag and due to more stringent controls is plagued by a slew of doping issues. The first case was from Nov 2018.

- Richie Rude and Jared Graves.

https://www.pinkbike.com/news/exclusive-richie-rude-and-jared-graves-failed-drug-test-at-ews-france.html

- Both are sponsored by the same Nutritional supplier... but contamination through that source seems unlikely :eek:

The defense of Rude is"funny"... someone snuck him a contaminated bottle.

https://www.pinkbike.com/news/richie-rude-announces-return-to-ews.html

Sure man... :rolleyes:


- And now there's a third big name being caught: Martin Maes.

https://www.pinkbike.com/news/martin-maes-tests-positive-for-masking-agent-at-ews-rotorua-and-tasmania-receives-90-day-ban.html

Interesting enough Martin Maes has story that is pretty credible and transparent, which is unique for me (these stories are never believable...). The substance was applied by an independent doctor at a (non-UCI race) for treatment of an inflamed wound. The doctor acted almost certainly in good faith and fully takes the blame. Maes and his team asked the doctor if this treatment was allowed, the doctor "was sure it was", not strange he thought as this is indeed a standard medication and he does not seem like a doctor who dealt with doping regulation before.

But then Maes and his team dropped the ball utterly and completely. Instead of immediately checking and applying for a TUE they let it go. Allegedly Maes even mentioned it every time he got tested, which adds insult to injury.

After the positive they realized their mistake and applied for a TUE, something which rightly got rejected (it was months later... amateur hour). The UCI decided for a painful slap on the wrist: short ban and annulling the EWS victories where he was positive.

I expect more people to run into issues as clearly the sport is rather "unused" to testing and the responsibilities that causes for the athletes. And it's pro-athletes being pro-athletes :rolleyes:
 
Feb 27, 2019
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Re:

the sport is rather "unused" to testing
The sport might be, but the athletes concerned shouldn't be. All have competed in UCI* sanctioned events (DH or BMX) for a number of years, so you'd think they'd pee'd in a bottle and filled out the form before...

* yes, I know.
 
May 26, 2009
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Rude and Graves simply got popped when doing bad things.

But Maes is simply astounding.. even if he was using the incident as a juicing possibility, getting that TUE when that doctor prescribed that recipe should have been prio #1. there's more than enough reason to give him the benefit of the doubt on being honest here, but it's his own responsibility to get it sorted out with the governing bodies ASAP. Instead he and his team just ignored it even when it did cross their minds a few times.

Bad actor or good actor, it's Amateur hour.

On the UCI testing, you'd say that would be the case, especially the WC DH series and World Championship Maes competed in.
 
Dec 20, 2019
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There are too many stories about doping, and I don't know how the hell they can't prevent this one. I heard that sometimes they don't have enough drug tests, or some of them are positive when it's negative and vice versa. Still don't understand why those big organisations that are hosting such evenements don't have enough drug test's. I've been looking through the internet and I've found this testcountry.com Probably this will be the perfect solution for most of them and they will be able to locate the doping guy. Hope they will hear my advice and will fix this issue.
 
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