captainflack

When I was at school, the wheezy guy who was crap at sport would claim to have asthma so he could spend PE lessons in the library.

Now it turns out that Froome, Wiggins and whole bunch of other top international athletes were on banned steroids, quite legally, and in secret.

It helps explain a few things...

https://www.theguardian.com/society/2014/dec/28/asthma-elite-athletes-study-swimmers-cyclist-eid

The top comment nailed it, back two years ago.

If only the Russians had read the rule book....

iggle

****ing Mo FARAH!!!

jam25mack

A lot of top sportsmen and women have asthma and are therefore have an inhalar (which are generally steroid based). Paul Scholes for instance.... Personally, as someone with asthma, I don't see anything wrong with that.

Millhouse

If everyone is on drugs, is drugs cheating?

Bahtatboy

Nor do I. But ... there's something just niggling away there ... 70% of the UK swimming squad have asthma, some 10x the national rate ... Nah, sorry, ignore me, it's nothing ... (cough)

scrubbedexpat141

We should make them all snort some Colombian marching powder and then swim the 50m.

jam25mack

Ooft, if I am honest I haven't read any of the details but that does come across as a bit fishy....

captainflack

I see two things wrong. Firstly, this should not be done in secret. If you have asthma, fine. But any medication you are taking that is otherwise banned should be a matter of public record.

Secondly, there is a grey area here as to whether these athletes have asthma in the conventional sense, for example see this article from two years ago:

https://www.theguardian.com/society/...rs-cyclist-eid

The picture is, inevitably, a bit more complicated. While a few have so-called classic asthma, the largely allergy-triggered constriction of the bronchial tubes that usually begins in childhood, Dickinson tests for what is known as exercise-induced asthma, or EIA.

The symptoms are similar – a contraction of the airways brings the feeling of a tight chest – but instead it is caused by rapid and heavy breathing during exertion. Atmospheric factors can exacerbate this. The chlorine environment in pools is believed to be part of the reason for the very high EIA levels for high-level swimmers, while cold air can also be a trigger, boosting numbers for road cyclists and the likes of cross-country skiers, with about half of the latter group having the condition.

Dickinson, head of the respiratory clinic at Kent’s School of Sport and Exercise Science, says he nonetheless views it as asthma: “It depends which respiratory consultant you talk to on whether you put these athletes on a spectrum of asthma, or whether you think that’s purely down to them exercising really hard in a certain environment, and if you take them out of that environment they’re fine. It’s a grey zone. But my argument is it’s a form of asthma.”

So, you just need to find a doctor to confirm you get out of breath after exercising hard, and hey presto, you can take steroids - secretly and legally.

The problem with that secrecy is it means that it was never visible to researchers just how many top athletes have TUEs.

Considering that all top athletes seem to be asthmatics, perhaps there should be a kind of special olympics or paralympics for those people who are blighted by their lack of asthma (and hence their unfortunate disadvantage of not being on steroids)?

Bahtatboy

Exactamundo. Beginning to have some sympathy for the Russians: it's all a matter of degree, which it shouldn't be.