Drugs in sports

There are so many side discussions going on that I wanted to throw a thread up and see if it could be a place to discuss this in more detail...and have a place to refer back to. With all the debate about Dara how does anyone here feel about Bernard Lagat becoming a US citizen and now running for us in Beijing after testing positive for EPO in 2003 and being banned from the World Championships in Paris (see below)? How does anyone feel about Amy Van Dyken being inducted into the USOC Hall of Fame ahead of Mary T...but no one has seen the sealed testimony from her in the Balco investigation? Danish study questions validity of testing for performance-enhancer EPO www.newser.com/.../D91HSFKG0.html Study Shows Problems With Olympic-Style Tests www.nytimes.com/.../26doping.html Here is a fascinating article from Outside magazine in 2003: outside.away.com/.../200311_drug_test_1.html Drug Test Great Moments (in Cheater History) By Ki Bassett "1904 Trainers give exhausted American runner Thomas Hicks a mixture of brandy and strychnine to keep him going during the 24-mile Olympic road race. He wins, but subsequently collapses just past the finish line. 1952 At the Winter Olympics in Oslo, Norway, several speed skaters become ill from amphetamines. 1960 After taking amphetamines, Danish cyclist Knut Jensen crashes during a Rome Olympics road race, fractures his skull, and dies. 1967 British cyclist Tommy Simpson dies near the summit of Mont Ventoux, on Stage 13 of the Tour de France. He had allegedly taken amphetamines and chased the stimulants with brandy. 1968 The International Olympic Committee establishes mandatory drug testing at the Mexico City Olympic Games. 1972 Dr. Bjorn Ekblöm of Stockholm's Institute of Gymnastics and Sports invents "blood packing," which involves removing blood, increasing the concentration of red blood cells in a centrifuge, and restoring it through transfusion. 1976 East German swimmers are deceived into taking anabolic steroids by their coaches and trainers. They win 11 out of 13 swim events at the Montreal Summer Olympics that year. 1983 Seventeen athletes, including two from the United States, test positive for anabolic steroids at the Pan American Games in Caracas, Venezuela, and are disqualified. Eleven others leave the games in protest. 1987 EPO emerges as a doping agent, and over the next three years, 17 Dutch and Belgian professional cyclists die after injecting it. 1988 After winning the 100 meters at the Seoul Olympics, Canadian sprinter Ben Johnson is stripped of his gold medal after testing positive for the steroid Stanozolol. 1996 Irish swimmer Michelle Smith medals four times in Atlanta. Two years later, FINA, the governing body of international swimming, finds her guilty of manipulating a urine sample for an out-of-competition test. Smith is banned from competition for four years and misses the 2000 Sydney Olympics. 1998 Four days before the Tour de France, Willy Voet, a masseur for the Festina cycling team, is caught with 400 vials of performance-enhancing drugs. The team is asked to leave the Tour. 1998 In August, shortly before breaking Roger Maris's record of 61 home runs in a season, St. Louis Cardinals slugger Mark McGwire acknowledges that he has been using androstenedione, an androgenic steroid, for more than a year. 1998 U.S. runner Florence Griffith-Joyner, a three-time gold medalist, dies in her sleep from a heart seizure at 38. It is widely suspected that she used human growth hormone to increase her strength. 2003 Bernard Lagat of Kenya, a bronze medalist at the Sydney Summer Games, tests positive for EPO and is banned from the World Track and Field Championships in Paris. He had planned to run the 1,500 meters." From Outside Magazine