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Doping in XC skiing

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Good catch by the cops. It becomes a bit more difficult to hide doping when wiretaps and surveillance video can be used by the Police.

I doubt it was a coincidence that Hauke was caught in the act.

Disappointed with Poltoranin. But I always knew he was in the high risk group. :sad:
 
Re: Re:

Aragon said:
MrRoboto said:
Wow. That could almost literally be called being caught red-handed.
Story goes that Canadian XC skiing coach Anders Lenes witnessed similar view having opened a wrong door at the 1984 Sarajevo Winter Olympics when he witnessed a Finnish cross country skier receiving a transfusion.

Interesting if true, but nobody knows for sure what he actually saw.

It was not against the rules then so it's not surprising that someone could walk in on them. No need to be so secretive about it.
 
Re:

ToreBear said:
I doubt it was a coincidence that Hauke was caught in the act.

No, of course not. After they got the information, they sent observation teams after the athletes. Police said so in the press conference.

Anyway, it's morally questionable how this video turned up online. Evidence well and good, but this should also have consequences for the policemen who gave it to the media. Obviously this is against Austrian law.
 
Re:

MrRoboto said:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ihP_MSLAIj8

Wow. That could almost literally be called being caught red-handed.

Interesting to see people being caught for blood doping. We haven't heard to much about that lately.

This is a very sad video, because had he started yesterday he would've finished in the TOP30 , maybe 20 max. And the gold was won by a doper...
 
Seeing all the reactions by officials, athletes, coaches as well as media is what makes me really sick. They all know what is going on, all too amny of them do or did it themselves. Yet, whenever some small fish get busted they act like they are totally in shock. Without even blinking with an eye. That Level of mendacity is simply repulsive. What a crazy world proffesional sports are, is just weird.
 
Because if anyone deviates one iota from the party line that dopers are pure evil and shows any empathy towards these guys ever, there will be a virtue signalling journalist who asks the following: "What is it about these dopers you seem to admire so much?"
 
Bavarianrider said:
Seeing all the reactions by officials, athletes, coaches as well as media is what makes me really sick. They all know what is going on, all too amny of them do or did it themselves. Yet, whenever some small fish get busted they act like they are totally in shock. Without even blinking with an eye. That Level of mendacity is simply repulsive. What a crazy world proffesional sports are, is just weird.
It's not just the reaction by the other athletes but also the reaction of some media outlets that really annoy me. For example I saw an interview with a German journalist whose point was pretty much that the problem of this case is the ÖSV and the Austrians who don't identify the problem that seemingly everyone in their team dopes. And I mean yeah, that Austrian XC skiers are part of doping scandals time and time again is a problem indeed but behaving as if this is a purely Austrian problem and beating on Austrian sports persons because they are the ones who dope just seems so unfair to me. I have enough of foreign media talking of the dirty Austrians while praising Norwegians, Swedes and all other athletes who beat the Austrian dopers by miles every single race. Everyone is just closing their eyes while celebrating themselves for catching a guy who might have gotten a 30th place. The Austrians are part of a much bigger international problem but the source of this problem is the naivety all around the sporting world.

And I know it's not like i told any of you anything new, but I just had to do something against my frustration and this certainly helped.
 
Gigs_98 said:
Bavarianrider said:
Seeing all the reactions by officials, athletes, coaches as well as media is what makes me really sick. They all know what is going on, all too amny of them do or did it themselves. Yet, whenever some small fish get busted they act like they are totally in shock. Without even blinking with an eye. That Level of mendacity is simply repulsive. What a crazy world proffesional sports are, is just weird.
It's not just the reaction by the other athletes but also the reaction of some media outlets that really annoy me. For example I saw an interview with a German journalist whose point was pretty much that the problem of this case is the ÖSV and the Austrians who don't identify the problem that seemingly everyone in their team dopes. And I mean yeah, that Austrian XC skiers are part of doping scandals time and time again is a problem indeed but behaving as if this is a purely Austrian problem and beating on Austrian sports persons because they are the ones who dope just seems so unfair to me. I have enough of foreign media talking of the dirty Austrians while praising Norwegians, Swedes and all other athletes who beat the Austrian dopers by miles every single race. Everyone is just closing their eyes while celebrating themselves for catching a guy who might have gotten a 30th place. The Austrians are part of a much bigger international problem but the source of this problem is the naivety all around the sporting world.

And I know it's not like i told any of you anything new, but I just had to do something against my frustration and this certainly helped.


I agree. Hauke and Baldauf have had decent results at the junior levels, no medals, but solid results. Like many Austrians, they excel more in skate races and sometimes in sprints, particularly Baldauf, and they've had a number of good results on the WC. They are 26, almost 27 years old. Now is the time when xc skiers have or are starting to get their best results. Mid 20's to early 30's. They had a great team sprint, were doped, on their home tracks, yet were outclassed by 5 other teams, like they have been for many WC races. There is no way these are isolated cases. The more some of these stories come out, the more I believe that you can't win without some form of doping.

I am sad that a guy like Poltoranin, a VERY talented skier that's had excellent results as a junior, top 5 in two races plus a great relay leg in Vancouver as a 22 year old, to winning his first WC race at the age of 22, 13 total wc wins, a plethora of other podiums, podiums at the World Champs, somebody who didn't just jump onto the scene as a nobody or that had shady results at majors while doing nothing at the WC's. He's been world class for a decade on the WC. What are the others are doing? And people like JT Boe saying 'how many times has he stolen medals from the Norwegians...' How pretentious.

I will say however, that doing this old school, with blood doping and EPO is painfully dumb. I mean why do it like that?
 
ppanther92 said:
BullsFan22 said:
I will say however, that doing this old school, with blood doping and EPO is painfully dumb. I mean why do it like that?

Why not do it like that? None of the guys had a positive test or an anomaly in his blood pass.

And to add to that: it's most likely the most simple form of doping when you don't have the ressources.
That said, Dürr was actually busted for a positive EPO test. But the way he talked about his EPO use in the ARD documentary doesn't exactly sound like he had the most professional surroundings. He basically got the EPO, dosed it himself, injected it himself. Him getting busted back in 2014 directly before the 50 km race in Sochi sounds a bit like a case of overexcitment and giving yourself just a slightly higher dose than usually. Not exactly unlikely that EPO still works as well as it has always done as long as the doping is perfectly executed.
So yeah, I think the biggest takeaway from this story is that doping is as undetectable as always.
 
This really shows that (regular) anti-doping really is a joke - all major busts only due to internal info/rat/whistle-blow, police raids/surveil. (independent of the sports govs/bodies) or just stupid outright mistakes.
Athletes are doped as *** but still flying under the radar comfortably and not picked up via regular checks, passports, etc... And even if they are (cause of their mistake mostly), many of them are covered up afterwards anyways (too big to fall). :rolleyes:
 
Mar 14, 2009
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Bavarianrider said:
German media report that up to 60 athletes could be included.

I bet that in the end we will get one or two names of random cyclists and the rest will be covered up.

Mark Schmidt, the team doctor for the famous Gerolsteiner team.

You can't make this s... up.

They said other sports are included so we all know cycling is part of it.

But again, the big teams/riders won't be using this clown so just the second tier riders again?

Yawn ... :cool:
 
https://www.dn.se/sport/expert-med-mikrodoser-kan-man-ducka-for-dopningstester/
Professor Christer Malm at Umeå University says micro dosing is undetecable but a system is being worked on. (WADA are eager to get it done) At the moment micro dosing is probably rampant.

Det vet sådana som läkaren Mark Schmidt också och han har vetat det länge. Polisen misstänker att verksamheten pågått i tio år. Redan 2009 pekades han ut av den österriske Tour de France trean Bernhard Kohl, som senare stängdes av för dopning.

– Mark Schmidt var den som hjälpte mig. Han hade hand om hela dopingproceduren. Vi jobbade med mikrodosering och han visste exakt hur mycket man skulle ta för att det inte skulle synas på testerna, sade Kohl i en intervju med tidningen Kurier.

-At 2009 TdF third placed Bernhard Kohl told the newspaper Kurier,

Mark Schmidt was the one who helped me. He was in charge of the entire doping procedure. We worked with micro-dosing and he knew exactly how much one would take because it would not appear on the tests, Kohl said in an interview with the newspaper Kurier.
 
ppanther92 said:
BullsFan22 said:
I will say however, that doing this old school, with blood doping and EPO is painfully dumb. I mean why do it like that?

Why not do it like that? None of the guys had a positive test or an anomaly in his blood pass.

And to add to that: it's most likely the most simple form of doping when you don't have the ressources.

Yeh I don't understand why you wouldn't do it. If you have the logistics under control this is a proven effective and safe way to significantly boost performance in elite endurance athletes. Best of all if you have trustworthy people close to you there's no need to be in any way involved in a doping supply chain. Look at those not caught in Puerto, Freiburg etc, or those that got caught up and what they did after.

I mean for GTs the logistics are somewhat complicated, but one day races...
 
Re: Re:

ToreBear said:
Aragon said:
MrRoboto said:
Wow. That could almost literally be called being caught red-handed.
Story goes that Canadian XC skiing coach Anders Lenes witnessed similar view having opened a wrong door at the 1984 Sarajevo Winter Olympics when he witnessed a Finnish cross country skier receiving a transfusion.

Interesting if true, but nobody knows for sure what he actually saw.

It was not against the rules then so it's not surprising that someone could walk in on them. No need to be so secretive about it.
I happen to know that at least one Finnish 1984 athlete had a strange huge needle mark in his/her arm observed by a competitor, but the following speaks against the idea of "clumsy" on-the-spot transfusion:

- Random transfusions were most likely illlegal under the law and blood doping was banned by the FIS 1983 rules even when it was unclear whether the IOC rules or FIS rules were the ones enforced.

- At least Aki Karvonen received his 1984 blood treatment in the central military hospital before the games.

- In 1984 Lenes didn't bother to tell his story in order to defend Norwegian head coach Magnar Lundemo who accused the Finnish team of blood doping or the West German doctor who claimed to have seen Finns carrying blood-covered towels. My gut feeling is that he saw something and only assumed that it was a transfusion when Karvonen admitted later having blood doped.
 
Lequack said:
The more money is in the sport, the less likely they are to discover anything. THat's why you never hear about doping scandals in soccer, NFL, NBA, etc. Inspectors are well aware to stay away from the money sports.

Yeah that seems to be the case.

In football (I mean the soccer one) there have been players dying on the pitch every once in a while.

Doping tests were introduced after a cyclist died in Tour de France. Then people realized that we can't keep going like that. Meanwhile people can die in football and nobody cares. It's weird. Too much money involved to let the idols of hundreds of millions of people to get caught.
 
Re: Re:

Aragon said:
ToreBear said:
Aragon said:
MrRoboto said:
Wow. That could almost literally be called being caught red-handed.
Story goes that Canadian XC skiing coach Anders Lenes witnessed similar view having opened a wrong door at the 1984 Sarajevo Winter Olympics when he witnessed a Finnish cross country skier receiving a transfusion.

Interesting if true, but nobody knows for sure what he actually saw.

It was not against the rules then so it's not surprising that someone could walk in on them. No need to be so secretive about it.
I happen to know that at least one Finnish 1984 athlete had a strange huge needle mark in his/her arm observed by a competitor, but the following speaks against the idea of "clumsy" on-the-spot transfusion:

- Random transfusions were most likely illlegal under the law and blood doping was banned by the FIS 1983 rules even when it was unclear whether the IOC rules or FIS rules were the ones enforced.

- At least Aki Karvonen received his 1984 blood treatment in the central military hospital before the games.

- In 1984 Lenes didn't bother to tell his story in order to defend Norwegian head coach Magnar Lundemo who accused the Finnish team of blood doping or the West German doctor who claimed to have seen Finns carrying blood-covered towels. My gut feeling is that he saw something and only assumed that it was a transfusion when Karvonen admitted later having blood doped.

Hmm, thanks for the info. It could also be that Lenes just didn't want the hastle. Accusing others of cheating was and still is considered bad sportsmanship in Norway. Unless one has evidence of course. IIRC from what I have read later, Lundemos accusation was not received well in Norwegian media.
 
Lequack said:
Gigs_98 said:
Bavarianrider said:
German media report that up to 60 athletes could be included.

I bet that in the end we will get one or two names of random cyclists and the rest will be covered up.
This. Those stories are never as big as claimed

The more money is in the sport, the less likely they are to discover anything. THat's why you never hear about doping scandals in soccer, NFL, NBA, etc. Inspectors are well aware to stay away from the money sports.

That's not quite true, there are actually quite a few athletes busted each year in the NFL (although far short of the number who are actually doping, which is probably close to 100%). The difference is that no one makes a big deal of it and the bans are short. Bottom line is that the fans do not gaf and the sport itself is far more dangerous than the drugs.
 
proffate said:
Lequack said:
Gigs_98 said:
Bavarianrider said:
German media report that up to 60 athletes could be included.

I bet that in the end we will get one or two names of random cyclists and the rest will be covered up.
This. Those stories are never as big as claimed

The more money is in the sport, the less likely they are to discover anything. THat's why you never hear about doping scandals in soccer, NFL, NBA, etc. Inspectors are well aware to stay away from the money sports.

That's not quite true, there are actually quite a few athletes busted each year in the NFL (although far short of the number who are actually doping, which is probably close to 100%). The difference is that no one makes a big deal of it and the bans are short. Bottom line is that the fans do not gaf and the sport itself is far more dangerous than the drugs.


For the NFL, I fully agree with that comment. Concussions long term are going to cause a lot more problems than anything the drugs are going to do.
 
An interesting interview with Andriy Deryzemlya, of "I haven't given up hope yet, he has to take a leak first. Let's just say I know him and he usually comes 40th, not 3rd" fame (Björn Ferry's response to missing a bronze medal at the World Championships to the Ukrainian) has found its way across the wintersport sites in Eastern Europe. He talks about the problems of the team replacing aging elements and that they have been a long way below their usual performance this season (Dzhima, Pidhrushna and the Semerenko twins have all struggled to be competitive for most of the season, and young talents coming through are either struggling to improve to World Cup level, or are - like Junior World Champion in sprint and pursuit Ekaterina Bekh - Russian imports). He talks about how the Russian domestic calendar is surprisingly well paid so that there are athletes who can make a living competing on the national calendar without the need to move up a level to the international sphere, and as a result you see a lot of Russians who go overseas to race internationally return and compete in Russia once that is over.

The "interesting-to-the-Clinic" section is when he is asked about why the Ukrainians are happy to take a political stand against Russia (boycotting the Uvat' and Khanty-Mansiysk IBU Cup rounds last season, for example) but have been surprisingly quiet when discussing Russia's doping problems. Deryzemlya mentions that he used to talk to people like (Russian coach) Sergey Konovalov about what was happening politically in Ukraine but would not be believed, but on doping he explains that it is preferable to differentiate - he is not against criticising a team but if an athlete has served their time then singling out them as an individual comes across as baiting, especially given Ukraine's fractious political history with Russia. This is the key bit:

О многих спортсменов и сборных можно дискутировать о допинге. Почему мы не говорим о норвежцев, в которых асма и разрешено принимать препараты? В той же сборной Франции есть люди, которые идут на допинг и заполняют пол-листа разрешенных препаратов. Я не раз сдавал на допинг и пишу: «Употреблял витамин С, витамин Е». А норвежцы, шведы расписывают кучу всего. Мне было неприятно. Поднимался вопрос: астматикам - это профессионалы или уже паралимпийский вид спорта? Тогда сделали запрос по просьбе болгар, кто же все-таки астматикам. И пришла ответ - не поименно, а количественная. 28 людям из топ-30 официально разрешили употреблять препараты от астмы, в том числе россиянам. Что они там принимали - Бог его знает.
He mentions that we don't talk about the Norwegians and asthma drugs, or the French, who where Deryzemlya claims to have been using Vitamins C and E were writing entire lists of the substances they were using. Unfortunately he doesn't say when this particular incident was, but he mentions that at one point the Bulgarian team made a request for information as to who of the competition had clearance for using asthma drugs, and 28 out of the top 30 (in what, Andriy? A given race? A World Cup or IBU Cup overall? A Mass Start startlist?This is the problem, it's hard to take the context of these comments without knowing that) were claiming asthma.

Obviously Deryzemlya had plenty of shade in his time - as that Björn Ferry quote can attest - but it would be interesting to know what he's talking about with regards to the 28 of 30 - and also this interestingly suggests that the Bulgarians are among those who are not abusing the TUE system etc., which is interesting as obviously Anev and Iliev have been plugging away in a decent niche in the midfield for a good few years now.
 
https://www.sports.ru/biathlon/1072156186.html

From ZDF sport:
Schröcksnadel: Deutsche beteiligt
Der Präsident des Österreichischen Skiverbandes Peter Schröcksnadel hat seinen Vorwurf bekräftigt, dass auch deutsche Sportler in den Dopingskandal um die Nordischen Ski-Weltmeisterschaften in Seefeld verwickelt sind. "Mir hat das ein Ermittler gesagt, dass auch deutsche Sportler betroffen seien. Und dass der Fall eine internationale Geschichte ist", sagte Schröcksnadel im Interview der "Bild"-Zeitung. Im Zuge einer Doping-Razzia im WM-Ort Seefeld waren am Mittwoch fünf Langläufer festgenommen worden. Alle haben inzwischen Eigenblutdoping gestanden und sind wieder auf freiem Fuß.

News is that the Austrian ski president is saying that German athletes (some of them competing in Seefeld) are also implicated in the doping ring that the Austrians were involved in.

I am sure there is more to come...
 

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