Drugs in Sport

When taken it makes muscles work more effectively and is particularly useful for endurance athletes. Whatever the rights and wrongs of this case, there is no question that EPO remains cycling’s enemy within just as it was back in 1999. This turned out to be the most famous case of a sports star testing positive for a band substance. Days later, the riders concerned were thrown in a French jail.

The 1998 Tour de France was almost destroyed because of an EPO scandal, and ever since the sport has been battling to restore a battered image. 79 and was subsequently banned for two years. s of a gram of a banned substance methamphetamine were found in his urine sample, and the banned substance coming from an American version of a Vicks nasal inhaler, which he bought for a blocked nose not knowing that it contained the band substance methamphetamine. Months after the race, top French rider Richard Virenque continued to protest his innocence, but in the autumn a judge ruled that he did take drugs.

Many suspect it is used in a number of different sports, but it is cycling which has suffered most of the bad publicity surrounding the substance.

One of the first drug related incidents to hit the headlines was when in 1988 at the Seoul Olympics, Canadian sprinter Ben Johnson tested positive for the band substance nandrolone after winning the 100m in a new world record time of 9.

This is just one of a number of case’s concerning sports stars failing drugs tests each year.

After EPO was discovered in a team car, members of the top Festina team were thrown off the Tour de France.

EPO, or erythroprotein, is used to boost the body's oxygen-transmitting capability. Although the Union Cycliste International (UCI) introduced a blood test designed to restrict EPO use in January 1997, it was in July 1998 that the amount of abuse was revealed to the world.