IOC Troubled by Worldwide Spread of Drug Usage by Athletes

“Coaches and athletes exchange information and sell the drugs. The drug traffic going on can be compared to heroin, with coaches and athletes the couriers.” --Prince Alexandre de Merode, chairman of the International Olympic Committee’s Medical Commission. Investigations following positive dope tests on athletes show that a drug trafficking network exists in Olympic sport on a world-wide scale, the chairman of the Medical Commission of the International Olympic Committee says.

“We know it is going on and it’s a big concern to us,” commission chairman Prince Alexandre de Merode said in an interview with UPI.

The investigations conducted by the IOC show a distinct pattern in the spread of illegal substances and the sharing of information on how to obtain and use them, according to the Prince, who was in Geneva recently to launch a combined program with the World Health Organization stressing the importance of sport as a means to better health.

“First the banned substance is used by athletes of one sport in their own country,” he said. “Then we see it in the same sport in other countries. Soon it spreads to other sports and the whole chain is completed. There is a definite contact between athletes competing in the same sport, irrespective of national barriers.

“Coaches and athletes exchange information and sell the drugs. The drug traffic going on can be compared to heroin, with coaches and athletes the couriers.

“We have examples of drug traffic by mail two years ago. It was exposed, but it still exists in other ways.”

De Merode has names on file.

“But we must keep them secret at present. They will just go underground if they know we can identify them,” he said. “We have asked various governments to help.”

De Merode was also concerned about the dangers of AIDS--acquired immunity deficiency syndrome.

“The specter is frightening. I can see a time when team dressing rooms will have blood banks, aseptic rooms and recovery rooms. That’s not sport and we cannot accept it from an ethical point of view.”

The Prince said his Commission was preparing a paper, highlighting the dangers of blood doping and drawing attention to the possibility of catching AIDS.

The Belgian prince said athletes, coaches and team doctors are under great pressure from pharmaceutical companies to try new performance-boosting substances, such as anabolic steroids, amphetamines and narcotics.

“There is a lot of money involved. But athletes must be made aware of the dangers to their health when drugs are not being used for medication,” he said.

“Some team doctors have refused to give drugs to their athletes and the athletes just find another doctor. But that is not always the case. Doctors who give these drugs are breaking their Hippocratic oath. They are really damaging the people they are supposed to help.”

De Merode pointed out the danger of athletes becoming addicted to certain drugs and also building up a resistance leading to the need for increased dosages.

“And when they need these drugs for medical cures, they may not work,” he added.

But while athletes are prepared to use artificial means to enhance performances, there is always a flourishing market for drug dealers.

The IOC’s team of medical experts are now masters at detecting traces of banned substances when carrying out tests on athletes, but so far they have found no means of identifying cases of blood doping, although the practice is banned.

Under this method, about one liter of blood is removed from an athlete months before competition and oxygen-gathering red corpuscles are separated from the serum. The concentrated red cells are then frozen at extreme temperature. A month later, the whole operation is repeated with another supply of blood before the two concentrated units of blood are dripped back into the athlete’s system about one week before competition. The technique, aimed to aid endurance, is reported to improve performances by as much as 30%.

“We first came to know about it 1976, but we cannot control it. We are still trying to find a suitable test to track it,” de Merode said.

“More athletes are doing it now, especially following the admission by U.S. cyclists that they carried out blood doping.”

The U.S. blood-doping scandal became public in a story published by the Rolling Stone magazine last January and led to the resignation of Rob Lea, president of the U.S. Cycling Federation.

Seven members of the 21-strong U.S. Olympic cycling team, including four medalists, had taken part in the blood boosting, according to the article.

The seven included three of the four-man 4,000 meter pursuit silver-medal winning team, including individual gold medalist Steve Hegg and bronze medalist Leonard Nitz, and women’s road race silver medalist Rebbeca Twigg.

All the team members were offered the transfusions, but the others refused.

The article quoted a letter to the U.S. Olympic Committees Sports Medicine Council from Thomas B. Dickson, a sports medicine specialist who traveled with the cycle team.

Dickson said he saw blood doping being carried out on team members in a motel room near the Olympic velodrome only four days before competition started. He also described how he had to treat three riders, who became ill as a result of the transfusions.

The U.S. team’s Polish-born coach, Eddy Borysewicz, and team manager, Mike Fraysse, were primarily involved in setting up the operation and the transfusions were supervised by Dr. Herman Falsetti, a professor of cardiology at the University of Iowa, according to the article.

De Merode was clearly worried about the spread of blood-doping.

“It is a very sophisticated method and the dangers increase as the practice grows,” he said. “Sometimes more than one liter of blood is exchanged at a time and athletes can become anemic. Also if it is not carried out properly, this technique may cause septicaemia, air embolism, cerebral thrombosis, sudden bursting of red corpuscles, jaundice and hepatitis.”

The IOC medical commission has been fighting the battle against drug taking since 1967 and has a list of prohibited substances which it continually updates.

“We know the battle very well,” de Merode said, “and the fight gets harder when people do not observe the Olympic ideal. We want to return to the days when there was a code of honor, the days of chivalry in sport.

“Even the athletes’ commission has spoken out against doping,” added the Prince, referring to statements made by British Olympic champion middle-distance runner Sebastian Coe.

Coe, 1,500 meters gold medalist at the 1980 and 1984 Olympics, attacked the practice of drug-taking when speaking on behalf of the Athletics Commission at the XIth Olympic Congress in Baden-Baden, West Germany in 1981.

“We consider this (doping) to be the most shameful abuse of the Olympic idea. We call for the life ban of offending athletes, we call for the life ban of coaches and the so-called doctors who administer this evil,” Coe told the assembly.

The IOC Medical Commission has the full backing of IOC President Juan Antonio Samaranch.

“Doping not only dangerous to the health of athletes, but is also a kind of cheating,” Samaranch told a recent press conference at Geneva.

The IOC medical commission, although aiming at the same targets, was now attacking the problem from a different angle with the launching of its combined program with the World Health Organization to stress the importance of sport in promoting better health.

President Samaranch, addressing the 38th World Health Assembly May 10, said the IOC had previously concentrated its efforts on the negative aspects, such as attacking drug abuse.

“Up to now, the only apparent connections between the Olympic Movement and medicine have been the press reports dealing with cases of doping or manipulations of just a few athletes,” he said.

“The IOC was one of the first international organizations to recognize the danger of these manipulations and to set up, more than 20 years ago, a highly qualified panel of world specialists in order to fight against them.

Samaranch said this primarily repressive attitude has now evolved into an educative one.

The IOC’s Medical Commission extended its investigations into physiology, biochemistry, nutrition, osteopathy, biomechanics and specialized surgery. All advanced research in the medical field was taken into consideration.

The objective was no longer to repress, but to offer other solutions to enable the athletes to continue their progress without damaging their health, Samaranch said.

Both the IOC and the WHO had adopted many similar ideas and it was logical that the two organizations should work together, he added.

Samaranch told the Assembly that in addition to exercise the IOC would like to stress the importance of proper nutrition and diet as a means both of preventing disease and improving health. The IOC was fully in agreement with the WHO in emphasizing the importance of personal responsibility in health.

Samaranch said a joint working group had now been set up by the two organizations. Its members included Prince de Merode and Dr. Jacques Hamon, assistant director-general of WHO. This group, which has begun a series of contacts, is studying various areas and possibilities of collaboration.

The aim would be to develop programs designed to encourage sport and health in a strongly positive sense and to encourage personal responsibility in maintaining health.

He said the program would stress that good habits of personal hygiene and self-care lead to better health and superior physical capacity, while others such as the abuse of alcohol, smoking and the use of drugs would have an adverse affect.

De Merode welcomed the fresh challenge.

“It is the beginning of new step,” he said. Until now the IOC Medical Commission dealt with negative aspects, punishing players, athletes and trainers for taking drugs. But now we are working to help athletes, advising them that with proper nutrition and training they can improve their performances as well as their health.”

“We will be working more with the International Sports Federations and the Olympic Solidarity Program. We want to help in a practical way, liaise with appointed doctors from each of the five continental associations, find out what their particular needs are in the way of medical facilities and pool information.

“We will have lectures and run courses on such things as biomechanics, the treatment of injuries and the psychology of sports.”

De Merode said his Commission was also hoping to produce an Encyclopaedia of sports medicine.

“The Finns produced one about seven years ago, but it needs updating,” he said.