In the wake of a Chinese doping scandal, Michael Phelps doubled down Monday on his support for tougher sanctions — including a lifetime ban for anyone who tests positive for a banned substance.
“If you test positive, you should never be allowed to come back and compete again, cut and dry,” Phelps said. “I believe one and done.”
The World Anti-Doping Agency and World Aquatics have acknowledged that 23 Chinese swimmers tested positive for a banned substance ahead of the Tokyo Olympics. The results were not made public until media reports surfaced this year, with both bodies accepting the Chinese explanation that the positive tests were caused by tainted food.
Nine of those swimmers won medals - several as part of relay teams - n Paris, leading British star Adam Peaty to gripe that the playing field was not even.
While we’re over-hauling doping punishments, we have to confront the deeply broken doping testing system and widespread contaminations of many foods and medications. The World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) and its country-level entities (UKADA, USADA, etc.) don’t like to talk about how laughably bad their systems are, and how often the pop false positives. It wasn’t as well known until cyclist Lizzy Banks challenged a false positive last year and spent €40,000 in legal fees and testing fees to get a “no fault or negligence” ruling. And that wouldn’t have been possible at all if Banks didn’t have a medical background (she went pro just before finishing a medical degree) and was able to read the faulty reports herself and challenge the claims of UKADA. Thanks to her, we now know that WAY more common foods and over-the-counter medications have contaminations with banned substances, which produces positive results with trace-amounts of banned substances.
I’m all for cracking down on dopers and cheaters, so long as we fix the system so it doesn’t create false-positives.
The entire system is deeply corrupt beyond false positives.
We know for a fact that Russia was systematically cheating testing and the grand sum of the punishment they faced for it was having to compete as “Olympic Athletes from Russia” for two years.
They did it too they simply weren’t caught.
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https://apnews.com/article/2024-olympics-michael-phelps-swimming-5463df3d3500dc29fdbf47d2cb23f09f
Dude, come on. You literally had a weed scandal yourself. You’re the best olympics guy ever, you don’t need to give a shit about this. It’s okay to just keep your mouth shut about stuff.
Are you implying weed as a performance enhancing drug? Should they ban you for having alcohol too?
Alcohol was removed from the WADA list in 2018, so no.
Why was it removed? Is it that it’s not performance enhancing? Wow. That whistling sound you’re hearing is the point you’re aggressively trying not to understand.
Yeah, why should we care what the winningest and most famous Olympic swimmer says about Olympic swimming?
I believe in the Sun Tzu method. You are allowed to fuck up once. Fuck up again, off with the head (well, or a lifetime ban in this case). One and done would ruin too many careers with false positives or people that made a youthful fuck up.
While interesting, I’m not convinced it would stop pressure from an athlete’s home country. Just increases the personal conflict against those pressures.
Consider a 4 year ban for the country instead. Make it a serious offense.
How about lifetime for the athlete, 4 year for the country.
Make it 20 years, but only if it proven to be a team issue and not individual.
If you have a situation like Russia where there is a provable government doping program, agreed. But if an athlete makes the personal decision to use performance enhancers that happen to slip through the initial screening but then get caught by the Olympic testers, I wouldn’t hold that against the rest of the athletes from that country.
I would. Well not against the individual athletes but against their country of origin. Countries screening would need to be better than the IOC ones or en par.
The basic framing is: “your boss fucked up, you’re part of the fallout”.
An alternative would be to allow all doping.
But at the moment the approach is to reward the smartest cheaters and at least for me removed all interest for most sport events.
Just keep in mind, a lot of countries are not the US/Europe/China. There are small island nations and city states sending a number of athletes you can count with one hand. They many not have the technical/financial resources to pre-screen and rely only on the Olympics’ own testing process.
Also none of the countries is Europe.
That is a very good point which I haven’t considered!
Thanks :)
And? The fallout of losing access to the games is much smaller, so it balances out.
If you fuck around, be ready for what your own country does to you when they find out.
Ehhhh I think there might be place for a little more subtlety. Someone who’s admitted to doing so probably doesn’t deserve to be banned from participating in a sport they probably love. And a hard line might encourage people to take the denial till death approach which can make things annoying
We’ve seen this time and time again. Banning things outright just doesn’t work. Regulation works.
Also, almost every profession athlete uses steroids in some way or another.
As long as there is an appeals process. And it seems there was.
Absolutely. Yes.
Its russian medicine not doping /s
Not that I think it should be, but isn’t cannabis a banned substance? If so, doesn’t that apply to him?
Sort of… CBD isn’t, and anyway I imagine the exclusion of cannabis won’t be around much longer. There are many studies that show it has no impact on athletic performance.
CBD was unfortunately on the ban list when he got in trouble. It was only just removed a decade later in 2019.
It’s also one of the few chemicals in cannabis that can affect performance, unlike THC which just bugs me. Like they are almost picking and choosing, purely to just be finicky
Isn’t the idea of banning doping in the Olympics to deal with people using banned substances while actively competing? That is to say, even though Phelps uses weed, has he tested positive during an active competition for being on weed (or any other substance)?
What competitors do in their off time is fine as far as I’m concerned. But if they’re using right before or during actively competing, then I can see where it’s a problem. No?
Athletes who compete on an international level don’t have off time.
They’re training year-round, and there’s a lot of performance enhancing drugs that speed up recovery during the training season. Faster recovery gives the athlete more time to train, which enhances their performance during competition.You do realize that no one can work literally all the time without time off, right? Olympians are super athletes, but they’re not superhuman.
Ok, so he goes home at night, smokes a joint before bed, and is back in the gym the next day. Working year-round doesn’t mean you have zero free time.
You do realize there are millions of people who train for their sport all year long? I’m one of them.
So wtf are you doing here on Lemmy? Get your ass back to training! /s
In February 2009, a photograph of Phelps using a bong went viral; this resulted in the loss of Kellogg’s as a sponsor, as well as a three-month suspension by USA Swimming. Phelps admitted that the photo, which was taken at a party at the University of South Carolina, was authentic. He publicly apologized, calling his behavior “inappropriate”.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Phelps#Legal_issues
USA Swimming is who selects people for the Olympics.
With all due respect, you are conflating what somebody does in their personal time with doing something to cheat in a sporting event (the topic at hand). Despite Phelps having made some poor social and legal choices, his stance on zero-tolerance to doping in sporting events is no less relevant. What you’re suggesting is a red herring.
Literally Sha’Carri Richardson was banned from competing in the Tokyo Olympics by the US Anti-Doping Agency because she smoked weed to help cope with the death of her mother. You’re making a big deal arguing that something that really does actually happen doesn’t for some reason.
His choices were only poor because there are cooler drugs to do that don’t harm your lungs and heart.
You need your lungs and heart, Phelps! Cardio is literally your career!
Yeah. He was sooooo close to not winning almost thirty medals… Weed was such a huge factor right?
Yes. They can’t test as easily for LSD.
He won 28 Olympic medals. He’s the most decorated Olympian of all time. I think his career was fine. But no random internet person tell us more about what Michael Phelps should have done to be a better swimmer. LOL.
Imagine a Michael Phelps on meth swimming for medal 30.
Simply superior. The man wouldn’t have even needed water.
I am not doing so. The USA swimming organization is.
I think the window for the testing is what matters more. Whatever they do off-season is their business, as long as its not in their system during training and competition
Unfortunately that’s how doping is usually approached. There’s not much of an off-season for most endurance sports, just high volume lower intensity base building, and that’s where stuff like ligandrol and cardarine really shine. Get massive amounts of volume in without recovery getting in the way as much, develop monster aerobic capacity, then taper off and transition to threshold or more specific training
Wasn’t he banned from competing for a while because he tested positive for it or am I misremembering?
Yeah, I found out I wasn’t misremembering.
Y’all know that doping usually refers to performance enhancing drugs right?
But it’s called Dope!
/s
I’d imagine microdosing cannabis could be performance enhancing in shooting sports, for example.
Wrong.
Doping refers to deliberate use of compounds or procedures explicity banned by WADA, in some clearly-defined window around a competition.
Pot is still on the list. End of story.
I think they were joking, but that’s a good clarification.
Cannabis doesn’t enhance your performance in swimming.
That’s not the point.
It absolutely is the point.
It’s still a banned substance.
Despite what some weirdos think doping has a very specific colloquial definition. It indicates performance enhancing substances. Drugs that give you an edge in competition. As pot does not do that it’s clearly not the point. Everyone on Earth knows what Phelps is talking about here.
In February 2009, a photograph of Phelps using a bong went viral; this resulted in the loss of Kellogg’s as a sponsor, as well as a three-month suspension by USA Swimming. Phelps admitted that the photo, which was taken at a party at the University of South Carolina, was authentic. He publicly apologized, calling his behavior “inappropriate”.[286]
USA Swimming selects U.S. Olympians.
Whatever weirdo.
But cannabinoids are on the WADA banned list. https://www.wada-ama.org/en/prohibited-list
CBD is excepted, but he wasn’t using just CBD, he was smoking weed out of a bong. He was getting everything.
This is about Anti-Doping not banned substances. Do you not understand the discrepancy?
I’ll just keep pasting this…
In February 2009, a photograph of Phelps using a bong went viral; this resulted in the loss of Kellogg’s as a sponsor, as well as a three-month suspension by USA Swimming. Phelps admitted that the photo, which was taken at a party at the University of South Carolina, was authentic. He publicly apologized, calling his behavior “inappropriate”.[286]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Phelps#Legal_issues
USA Swimming selects American Olympic athletes.
And it’ll keep being irrelevant.
Fine and well, but coming from a gear-doping genetic freak created in a lab run by fish…
I don’t really have an end to that, I just wanted to call him a gear-doping genetic freak created in a lab run by fish.
Not only should they get a lifetime ban, but every athlete should be tested 100% of the time. There is no reason why something as huge and prestigious as the Olympics, with the kind of money it brings in, should not be doing this.
Also randomly along the year when they are training and having to tell exacty where they are at all times (so no hiding away doping & flushing them out) , as cyclists are.
Cyclism went so bad but now they’re tested really hard and often.
This sports stuff is expensive and controversial. Just ban sports competition. Solves the drugs shit and the trans stuff.
Don’t ban the competition, ban doping being illegal.
The ratings would be through the roof to watch some freak with more drugs than blood run a sub 8 second 100m right before his heart explodes.
I don’t think we should be promoting self harm for entertainment purposes.
Don’t get me wrong, I would absolutely watch the Monster League game every Sunday, but it will guaranteed lead to huge swaths of athletes destroying their bodies for ratings. They already do this without destructive performance enhancers, we don’t need to encourage it to be worse.
