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Wednesday, August 25, 2004

Athen 2004 : Game of Shame

It now average ONE a day, an athelete that was caught for using illegal susbstance in this Olympic games.

The latest is the Gold medal winner for Men Discus, Hungarian Robert Fazekas .

Yesterday was Belarus High Jumper, Aleksey Lesnichiy.

The day before was Russian Irina Korzhanenko

To date, the game has already expelled 18 atheletes, not including the 2 Greeks that avoided the urine test by declaring to be invloved in an accident(which was later to be found out to be a fake accident).
Nine weightlifters and six track and field athletes, including the Greek sprinters, have run afoul of the drug testers.

What is also notable is the drugs that are showing up in the tests.

Before the Games, the World Anti- Doping Agency, created since the 2000 Sydney Games, warned athletes that it had developed tests for human-growth hormone. The run-up to the Games were filled with the pursuit of athletes who had taken the "designer steroid" THG.

But the athletes being expelled in Athens are testing positive for steroids that were showing up in tests in the 1980s. Lesnichiy and Olga Shchukina, an Uzbek shot putter, took clenbuterol; Korzhanenko, like Lesnichiy, took Stanozolol.

Now, perhaps the atheletes that was caught with these illegal substances thought that test would be carried out to check for those *high end* drugs, thus rendering their quest to use those that was widely used since the 1980's.

Gone are the days where ONLY bodybuilder would use anabolic steroids for maximum growth. Nowadays, even recreational sportmen/women are taking them to enhance their weekend performance.

The mentality of these so called *weekend warrior* is that they want short cuts to better their perfomance, and for the amatuer bodybuilder/gym-goer is that it is the shortest way to gain mass and gain size.

What they do not know is the proper way to administer the drugs. Doping isn't just injecting yourselves with substances, it involves a science and a very indepth knowledge about it.

I've known of the latest local bodybuilding competition was awkwardly brought forward by 2 weeks to catch those bodybuilders on steroids. Obviously, the winner of the competition just some time ago, turned out to be safe from doping, and his body, doesn't reflect that of any competitetive bodybuilder, but that of one that worked hard, and was duly rewarded for contesting drug free.

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