/ 22 August 2008

Will the doper’s dream be the end of elite sport?

The road to Beijing was rocky but, once the Games kicked off, attention swung from protester to athlete and millions of people around the world had one common interest: to see the world’s greatest athletes compete in the world’s greatest sporting event.

This unique ability to transcend political, ethnic and religious differences is what makes sport so precious. It is what motivates governments and sports organisations to wage war on doping — a practice many believe threatens sport’s intrinsic values, if not its very existence.

Doping is a euphemism for the misuse of drugs in sport, but unlike other drug abusers, dopers are toned and look healthy; their drugs make them faster, stronger and fitter than their drug-free counterparts. It is the ultimate form of cheating in sport and the most difficult to detect.

The often-quoted statement by the founder of the modern Olympics, the Baron de Coubertin, that the fight is more important than the victory, rings hollow today.

The concept of sporting competition as a mutually beneficial exercise rather than a single-minded fight for glory is incomprehensible to many top athletes. Winning is the only option, a gold medal the passport to riches and celebrity status, and so doping can also come into play.

Doping takes place at all levels and most categories of sport, from school rugby through snooker and motor sport to the cream of track and field. Athletes take such high dosages of anabolic steroids that it would be illegal to administer them at those levels therapeutically.

They inject human growth hormone to stimulate muscle, bone and tissue growth, and use other hormones to control pain, repair tissue, increase growth and influence behaviour.

The hormone EPO and blood transfusions increase the body’s red blood cells and oxygen-carrying capacity. Diuretics, adrenaline, asthma inhalants, beta blockers: the list is extensive and keeps growing. But all of these performance enhancers pale into insignificance against the new kid on the block, gene doping, which could move doping up to a whole new level and spell the end of clean sport forever.

Gene therapy involves inserting new DNA into the body’s cells and manipulating the human genetic code by adding and subtracting genes. The potential sporting benefits are a doper’s dream: gene doping could be used to make undetectable cellular changes to increase endurance, speed, size, strength and recovery from injury.

The first hard evidence of gene doping came to light at the recent trial of athletics coach Thomas Springstein, accused of supplying steroids to athletes. Correspondence presented as evidence named a commercial product used to trigger a gene to stimulate the natural production of EPO. Synthetic EPO is detectable in sports drug tests but genetically manipulated EPO is not.

Gene manipulation can be detected with MRI scans and muscle biopsies, but these are impractical in sport. In a race against time scientists are experimenting with magnetic imaging and other non-invasive tests that will differentiate between real hormones and those created by genetic manipulation. However, detecting higher or lower levels of something that occurs naturally at cellular level in the body is a huge challenge and so far no solution has been found.

The anti-doping movement devotes vast amounts of money and human resources to drug testing, education and research internationally, but how successful are its efforts?

United States athlete Kelli White, who tested positive for the stimulant modafinil during the World Championships in 2003, said she was tested 17 times without being caught. She said that by applying a strict regime of when and where to use drugs, and planning where and when to compete, she could avoid being caught.

Her explanation was ”everybody is using” and she was advised to start on a doping programme to be competitive because she was ”low” after injuries.

And Victor Conte — the man behind the Bay Area Laboratory Cooperative scandal that exposed US track star Marion Jones and British sprinter Dwain Chambers as drug cheats — believes elite competition is rife with drugs and anti-doping procedures are ineffective because it is too easy to beat the testers.

Conte was prime instigator in the manufacture of designer drugs for some of the world’s best athletes, and his is probably the most accurate view of what is going on today in top-level sport.

Stringent anti-doping efforts in Beijing will uncover many, but not all, the drug cheats, and every time an athlete fails a drug test it will unleash a torrent of fury and disappointment from sports lovers around the world, most of whom still believe in the intrinsic value of sport and want the best athlete to win, not the athlete who can afford the best doping techniques.

The reality, however, is that escalating financial incentives and increasingly sophisticated doping methods make it more and more difficult to keep ahead of, or even keep up with, the drug cheats. In the long run it is anyone’s guess who will be the final winner.

Daphne Bradbury is the former CEO of the South African Institute for Drug Free Sport and a consultant on drug policy and testing