Australia is still reverberating after the Australian Crime Commission handed down a report that detailed a sporting community living under the shadow of “performance and image enhancing drugs”, “organised crime” and betting fraud.
This is your one stop shop to see all you need to know to keep up when the conversation around the coffee machine turns to the scandal.
What happened?
The Australian Crime commission dropped this report on Australian sport in a press conference at 10am February 6th.
The report detailed PEID and illicit drug use in Australian sport as well as criminal influence over betting and results.
Who is affected?
Australia’s major sporting codes, AFL, NRL, rugby union and cricket were also present. This presents the first major challenge for Dave Smith, the newly minted NRL CEO, as his league and the AFL are implied as the two codes most affected by the doping and criminal influence.
Cricket, tennis and soccer have been targeted as being susceptible to betting influences.
The ACC report presents findings that a number of players have been taking illicit drugs as well as PIEDS, aided by coaching staff, doctors and criminal elements.
The AFL players association admitted that criminals had probably gained traction within parts of the playing group by “infiltrated gyms and provision of various types of supplements and substances”.
Where do these drugs come from?
Performance enhancing suppliers include: online suppliers, anti-ageing clinics, medical practitioners, compounding pharmacies, sports scientists and high performance staff and supplement suppliers. All of the different avenues of supply and demand have been used as weak points for criminal elements to infiltrate sport.
The ACC explains that the supply of PIEDs can be a very lucrative business. The peptide and hormone business, in particular, is wide-spread among the sporting population and only getting bigger.
The use of PIEDs, especially in the sub-elite sporting athlete category is problematic because that leverage can lead to them being ‘bought’. This can also extend up to the elite level of sport in some cases.
This has led to matches being investigated for match-fixing and betting fraud.
An important touch-stone is that while many of the supplied PIEDs are banned for competition they aren’t illegal in normal supply and use situations.
How does it work?
Peptides and hormones are among the most popular avenues to enhance performance in sport. Peptides are particularly controversial because they are not yet approved for human use but are readily available online and in other places. They help recovery, help weight loss and boost muscle mass.
Various hormone treatments are helpful for athletes because they can aid the body replace all the different levels of substances in the blood to pre-exercise levels quickly to enable more training at a higher level or longer competition at full throttle.
Particular drugs examined by the ACC as significant players: GHRP-2, GHRP-6, CJC-1295, AOD-9604 and hexarelin.
The story was initially broken on a smaller level a few days ago when the Essendon Football Club was forced to admit that players in their club had been on performance enhancing regimes for some time.
Their staff had engaged the now-infamous Steve Dank, as a sports scientist. It appears he is at the centre of in PIED use at Essendon and Manly.
Where to from here?
Well for the NRL, investigators have already been sent to two clubs – Manly Sea Eagles and Penrith Panthers – and will establish an integrity commission. The NRL has called on Delloite to audit the high performance/sports science units at both clubs.
AFL CEO, Andrew Demetriou, held a press conference late in the day to announce extra funds and double down on the promise that people will be caught if they continue to cheat. However dubious those claims are after catching no-one before now and relying on the ACC to get this far.
The ACC report details that they are going to target drug cheats but also suppliers to try and stop the problem at the source. They have also passed on classified versions of their report to police to carry out other investigations and possibly lay charges.
Overall, sports fans will continue to hold their breath and see how long this takes to resolve. It won’t be a swift process.
Want to know more? Here is some required reading. If you find more information, add it into the comments section.
– AFL CEO Andrew Demetriou’s press conference;
– Victoria Police say cricket, tennis and soccer are at the biggest risk to match fixing;
– Crikey bought peptides online very easily;
– Great breakdown of the substances used to aid performance;
– NRL send Deloitte to audit Sea Eagles and Panthers;
– AOC chairman John Coates responding to the report;
– ABC’s 7.30 produced three segments on the scandal on February 6;
– A recent and revealing expose in Miami into baseball PED use shows how the pharmacy to athlete exchanges work and delve into the lucrative money that can be earned in the PIED business. This is a longer read but worth it if you want to know how all of this plays out in the real world, on a slightly larger scale;
– Popular American journalist, Bill Simmons wrote a great essay on PED use last week and it is pertinent here because it asks the question “why have we had our head in the sand so long?”
That is the question we are now asking in Australia.
What’s your best bet? For great odds on all your favourite sports check out PlayUp. Chances are you’re about to lose. Set a deposit limit.
It’s a pretty good time to be a Tasmanian sports fan right now. After years in the sporting wilderness with not much to celebrate,…
Olympic swimming legend and Australian Sports Commission boss Kieren Perkins has warned that "someone will die" if a multi-sport event that allows athletes to…
In 2015 when heavyweight boxer Tyson Fury beat Wladimir Klitschko, the fighter regarded by many as the ‘Greatest of all time’ in the sport,…
Join Australia's most vibrant online sports community and you have the chance to win $1000. The Roar is the perfect blend of sports reporting,…
Here is a review of our boxers who made a splash in the world rankings over the past year.
After intense debate at Roar HQ, we’ve selected the 23 most controversial moments for 2023.
