This week another Mexican triathlete appeared in the
ITU’s main page, he was caught using performance enhancing drugs. These are not isolated incidences but we do
not have a way to calculate how many are out there using these drugs. We do not have a systematic doping culture
because we lack a system and an organization to have one; what people call
organized crime in Mexico is really disorganized. We have too many crimes/bandits and little justice
as you hear in the news. To believe that
things are planned in Mexico is too much.
It is so bad that these triathletes are fighting literally for their life because they
are too old and do not know what else to do; most of them are unprepared to
continue with something else for living.
Please see:
1 août 2018
There is an
article written in the ITU’s page reporting a Mexican triathlete caught using
performance enhancing drugs. Doping points out to the real issue we
encounter in most of the athletes: “they are running for their
life.” I tell team members that “we are running for our life” daily;
going to work and perform the best we can to continue in the game. Being
a professional takes time and training so “running for our life” does not
become "running for our life" literally. To focus in our
work we have to know that “we are running for our life” daily. We
have to believe that this is our situation and more importantly in a Third
World Country. Our society takes this problem lightly and Mexican
triathletes end up using performance enhancing drugs to stay
alive. Our society takes training lightly and at the end “running
for our life” is literally “running for our life.” We hammer the
concept of “running for your life” in our team to improve training; economical,
physical and mental freedom depends on how focused and devoted we are to what
we do daily; if we know and understand that we are running for our life we
should take training more seriously. It is not the way the FMTRI and
related teams take it.
There are things in common in these two athletes who
were mentioned in the ITU’s page. Both
lived for years at the National Institute of the Sports in Mexico City and left
the center after finishing aging the U-23 category. They did not achieve anything as triathletes but
they complied with “marcas mínimas” (17:24 for swimming 1,500 meters; 15:20 for
5k running) in order to continue living at the center (food, shelter and money
for competitions). No one at the CNAR
has done much as a junior, U-23 or elite levels anyway. There is not doping control for “marcas
mínimas.” The testing should be done
then if it is like the anti-doping slogan says:
ITU is concerned about
athletes health and well-being when they pollute their body with drugs. ITU is
strongly committed to making sure that Triathlon remains a clean sport and that
our athletes are competing on a level-playing field. We realize how important
are both, in-competition and out-of-competition tests leading up to the Olympic
Games and ITU is committed to finding any athletes who do not respect the
rules.
We have not heard any comments from the Mexican
Federation, not even news about the incidents reported in the ITU’s page. Mexicans from the Federation are in the ITU’s
organigram and they are not controlling the information as it was the case with
the doping violation of Adriana Barraza which did not appear in the ITU’s page. These poor, “old dudes” triathletes, part of
the Mexican Federation, are becoming the scapegoats for using barbaric doping methods
and being mediocre triathletes. Doping
is present in a more sophisticated way by using a TUE (therapeutic use
exemption) like most of the first world countries. It is not an excuse but doping is present in
this context too:
The Norwegian
Olympic delegation has brought around 6,000 doses of asthma medication to the
2018 PyeongChang Olympics to treat national team members if they are diagnosed
with the chronic respiratory disease.
Norwegian
government-owned broadcasting corporation NRK published the list of drugs taken to PyeongChang by the Norwegian
team doctor. It includes 1,800 doses of Symbicort, 1,200 doses of Atrovent,
1,200 doses of Alvesco, 360 doses of Ventolin and 1,200 doses of Airomir –
which amounts to 10 times more asthma drugs than Finland has brought to South
Korea.
Some of these medication function as anabolic steroid
at high dosages and disappear rapidly after use:
These data indicate that
salbutamol exerts anabolic effects through androgen receptor agonistic activity
in vitro.
Beta-2
agonists are on the list of prohibited substances in sport. Salbutamol by
inhalation is permitted to treat allergic asthma, and/or exercise-induced
asthma or exercise-induced bronchoconstriction. If the level of salbutamol in
urine exceeds 1000 ng/mL, the result is considered as a doping violation with
an anabolic steroid. We report a case of a track and field athlete who tested
well above this limit during a competition. He had a valid therapeutic use
exemption for the use of salbutamol by inhalation and he claimed that he never
used salbutamol orally. Further studies under controlled application by
inhalation showed that this limit was exceeded. We propose that sanctioning
bodies in sport should consider this possibility before taking into account a
two-year ban for the use of an anabolic steroid.
Well, doping has been institutionalized by having a
TUE which sometimes do not follow the protocols for illnesses they treat e.g.,
using steroid orally for asthma in the case of Henri Schoeman and Adriana
Barraza. We wrote about it:
22 janv. 2018
Considering that inflammation is the final result of
the osmolar and vascular modifications described, anti-inflammatory treatment through inhaled steroids
is often effective and sufficient to achieve a good EIA/EIB control (93). It should be noted
that ICSs are the only anti-inflammatory drugs that improve respiratory
epithelial healing (107). ICSs reduce the damage induced by repeated training
and competitions, as we have seen for the phenotype of the ‘athlete's asthma’,
enabling the athletes to master their sports and improving the long-term
prognosis (10)…
Oral corticosteroids and oral or intravenous β2-agonists are prohibited. The list of prohibited drugs
is usually updated every year and can be found on the WADA website (www.wada-ama.org).
Doping should be taken seriously by ITU and
Federations to keep sports as a way of educating people to help to create a
better world, which is our main goal, and it has not happened. Doping in these Mexican triathletes is
because they realized they were “running for their life” too late in life. In order to pay bills one needs to embrace
the job seriously, otherwise one will be “running for one’s life,” and most of
the times one is already dead.
