Drug cheats threaten sports integrity
By Don Riddell, CNN World Sport
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(CNN) -- Drug cheats will never be beaten. Call me a cynic, I accept there will be individual success stories, but I do not see how they will be fully eradicated.
There will always an incentive to cheat in sport. The professional era has seen to that.
A study conducted before the Sydney Olympics showed an amazing 52 percent of world-class athletes admitted they would take a pill that would make them invincible. And they said they would do it with the prior knowledge that it would eventually lead to their deaths.
The drugs testers seem to be on the brink of a rare victory. Since the discovery of the designer steroid THG the cheats are on the run.
In years gone by, the authorities have waged war against anabolic steroids, blood doping, EPO and human growth hormones, for which there is still no effective test.
Tetrahydrogestrinone acts as a steroid, increasing aggression, accelerating muscle growth and helping recovery time after exercise. But its real attraction was that it was undetectable. The authorities had not even heard of it until a syringe of the stuff turned up at one of their laboratories. And of course, you cannot test for something you do not know about.
The cat was out the bag, but the fear is that THG is just the tip of the iceberg. How many other drugs are out there, flowing through athletes' bodies and helping them towards gold medals and world records? We may never know. Meanwhile the credibility of the sport suffers.
At the time of writing, one big name has been implicated. The European sprint champion Dwain Chambers of Great Britain admits he tested positive for THG, but denies knowingly taking it.
More positive results are expected, as hundreds of frozen samples from the World Championships in Paris are retested. Organizers at the Rugby World Cup will also be looking for it, as will the NFL in the United States.
It will be interesting to see just how many are eventually named, shamed and banned.
Cheats need permanent luck on their side. But that's hardly comforting for the integrity of their sport.
Don Riddell presents World Sport on CNN International at 0930 GMT, 1230 GMT, 1430 GMT, and 2130 GMT daily (also 0030 GMT at weekends and daily in Asia.)
