Doping attacks are possible through even fleeting skin contact
The Tokyo Olympics will take place without spectators
The Summer Olympics will take place completely without spectators at the competition venues in Tokyo. Because of the health emergency in the Japanese capital, no domestic fans are allowed.
The Olympic Games begin next Friday. A TV experiment shows how innocent athletes can become doping victims. Athletes like triathlete Jan Frodeno or Olympic javelin champion Thomas Röhler are shocked by the results.
SClean athletes could become victims of doping attacks through fleeting skin contact. The ARD documentation “Doping as a secret matter – guilty” reports on an experiment by the ARD doping editorial team and the Institute for Forensic Medicine at the Cologne University Hospital, which provided evidence of this. How athletes can become dopers unintentionally ”on Saturday (6:00 pm) in the first.
In the test series, twelve test subjects were given small amounts of various anabolic steroids using a carrier substance through the skin – with minimal touches on the hand, neck and arm, according to an ARD announcement on Friday. For all test subjects, the initial evaluations of the samples by the Cologne doping control laboratory would have revealed massive suspicion of fraud.
A doping control room in Tokyo
Source: AFP / BEHROUZ MORE
The prohibited substances were administered in minimal doses in the experiment. They were “partially detectable an hour after application and for up to 15 days,” it said. Athletes confronted with these results reacted in horror – mainly because of possible attack scenarios.
“I’m just shocked.”
Triathlon Olympic champion Jan Frodeno said after seeing parts of the ARD documentary with several top German athletes before it was broadcast, he asked himself whether the new facts could “perhaps also mean the end of professional sport to a certain extent”: “ How do you want to present any clean legitimacy in the future when the fraud actually becomes limitless? “
Beach volleyball player Karla Borger (“How can you protect yourself now?”) Or soccer player Almuth Schult (“It’s too easy to show the athletes as guilty with just a single urine sample”) were also unsettled. The experiment had “extreme effects in all directions,” said Olympic javelin champion Thomas Röhler: “I’m just shocked.”
Thomas Röhler won gold in javelin throwing in Rio in 2016
Source: pa / SvenSimon / Frank Hoermann / SVEN SIMON
According to the results of the experiment, Mario Thevis, head of the Cologne doping control laboratory, said: “If the samples had come from athletes, we would most likely have had a positive result in many of the samples taken.” the anti-doping rules, which would have been sanctioned accordingly. The affected athlete would be “punished in any case, possibly with a ban of up to four years”, quoted the ARD Thevis.
The proof that doping attacks can be carried out in a simple manner and that athletes can be tested positive by shaking a cornerstone of the global anti-doping system: the reversal of the burden of proof. While in criminal law the accused is only considered guilty if intent and guilt have been proven beyond doubt, in sports law a positive doping test serves as evidence of guilt. If the athlete concerned cannot prove that he has not doped, he will be banned.
According to constitutional lawyer Angelika Nussberger, if it was “so extreme” that the administration of a doping agent was “virtually imperceptible and possible as an act of sabotage”, a sanction would result in “a violation of human rights,” said Nussberger, who will be Vice President of the European Union until 2019 Court of Human Rights, was, the ARD. The consequence would be that the regulations would have to be changed. This burden of proof situation would have to be adjusted, she demanded. Sport would have to “look for a new system”.
.