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Meldonium is the icing on the sporting world’s drug-fuelled cake

Maria Sharapova is a month away from her doping ban coming to an end, and her return is causing all kinds of issues. (YouTube)
Roar Rookie
11th June, 2016
5

The spiralling epidemic of sporting drug cheats continues to puncture the credibility of elite sporting achievements.

With this year’s Olympic games drawing near, many question whether the Brazil-bound ‘world’s best’ are actually the world’s greatest cheats, liars and con artists. The deception, betrayal and win at all costs attitude of these ‘cheats’ is downright disgusting.

Maria Sharapova has tarnished the beautiful game of tennis that has given her much fame and fortune. This week Sharapova has been banned from competitive tennis for two years for the use of meldonium. Meldonium is medicinally used for its cardio-protective and anti-ischaemic effects (prevention of vascular disease) and is typically prescribed to the elderly with ischaemic conditions.

Meldonium is also thought to increase the capacity of oxygen delivery to the peripheral tissues during exercise. Therefore, it has been sort after by athletes to improve their athletic performance especially in endurance sports. This highlights how athletes looking to gain an edge are exploiting a flawed system that is full of loop holes.

Meldonium is available over the counter in Latvia, Russia and many Eastern European countries. The drug’s use is not approved in Australia and in most Western countries it is only acquired by prescription.

The ease at which an athlete based in Europe can access this drug further enhances why the relevant governing bodies need a complete overhaul of their policies and procedures.

The fact that meldonium was only banned at the start of this year was a huge mistake by the anti-doping authorities. They waited too long to put the relevant controls in place despite having adequate evidence that the use of meldonium was rife in the sporting community.

During 2015, the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) monitored the use of meldonium within sports worldwide. On January first 2016 the drug was added to the WADA prohibited list after growing evidence of its abuse by athletes for performance enhancing purposes in the years prior.

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Once such event that highlighted meldonium’s spike in use was at the at the 2015 European Games in Baku, Azerbaijan. 66 (8.7%) of the 762 athlete’s urine samples analysed pre competition and during the games tested positive for meldonium. However, only 3.5 per cent of the athletes declared the personal use of the then approved meldonium pre competition. These athletes weren’t by definition cheating due to meldonium’s approved status but they were clearly all aware of the potential athletic benefits of its use.

The effects of meldonium pale in comparison with drugs like erythropoietin (EPO) and anabolic steroids. However, any drug used by an athlete to gain an advantage, regardless of the level of performance-enhancement, should be banned immediately!

Have we learnt nothing from the Lance Armstrong saga? Cycling has been at the forefront of athletic doping allegations for decades. There has not been a clean Le Tour de France winner in the last 30 years.

If they weren’t doping during the year that they won, they have all at some point dabbled in EPO, blood transfusions, steroids, cortisol or clenbuterol to name a few. Try a performance-enhancing substance once and you are a cheat for life – period!

The sport of cycling is on its knees and deserves to be. Cycling has at least highlighted the biggest issue with drugs in sport: the fact that the drugs (and dodgy sports scientists, doctors and pharmacists) are always ahead of the testing procedures.

I am sorry Maria Sharapova. I don’t care if you have been taking meldonium since 2006. I don’t care that you never got the ‘memo’. All I care about is sport and clean sport. Cheat and you have bastardised the true meaning of sport and what it means to be the ‘best’. My only hope is that the 2016 Olympics isn’t tarnished by the doping scandal that I am predicting.

What does the future hold? Let’s hope that epidemic doping doesn’t force the governing bodies to legalise the use of drugs for all athletes. At least then, will we have sporting equality?

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