New wave of clenbuterol doping revelations to come
We hear there will be 100 revelations, including a couple more from Manawatu¯ .
We had better get accustomed to talking about clen, as in clenbuterol.
Four rugby players were outed last week for doping violations for using the banned stuff, including Manawatu¯ ’s Old Boys-marist captain, Rhys Pedersen.
We hear there will be 100 revelations, including a couple more from Manawatu¯ .
What is unusual is that none of this has come via the usual method, through drug testing. That isn’t done at the amateur level, nor would it be practical to ask 150,000 club players to piddle in a pottle.
It is done only at semi-pro NPC level and above.
Pedersen was caught when an outfit called Medsafe raided clenbuterol.co.nz and Drug Free Sport NZ investigators discovered the athletes’ client list. The
website operator, Josh Townshend, was sent to the klink for two years.
Now, most sportspeople should be wary of any pharmaceuticals they pop in their mouths, and Pedersen was when he tried clenbuterol and didn’t like the taste.
It isn’t an anabolic steroid. It’s an anabolic agent designed to relieve breathing disorders such as asthma, but is often used by bodybuilders to burn fat and by others as an unproven weight-loss drug.
Even the hearing tribunal said Pedersen didn’t use it to enhance his performance. So I dug around and found dozens of world-class athletes who have used it for that very purpose. Cyclist and Tour de France winner Alberto Contador was one banned and surely he wouldn’t have been out to shed kilos.
The drug is only legal in NZ by prescription or for use in horses, if you can find a tame vet. But say you procure it from Mexico or the United States, it’s not illegal to possess it, not until you pop it and play a sport in which it is banned.
Even then most club players wouldn’t have a clue. It’s a beta2agonist – everyone knows that!
While it’s impractical to have drug education at the amateur rugby level, all players know how to click on the web.
Pedersen isn’t the first from Manawatu¯ . In November 2016, Varsity prop Adam Jowsey imported clenbuterol for dietary reasons and his weight loss negatively affected his play. He copped a two year ban.
For such players, the sanction is costly and the publicity alone is damning. Most criminals get less.
At Pedersen’s hearing in Wellington on December 21, there was a Queen’s Counsel (QC) and two other lawyers effectively prosecuting, while Pedersen had three counsels in his team led by Paul David, QC.
Rugby’s judicial bigwigs concluded that on the basis of ‘‘no significant fault or negligence’’, Pedersen was entitled to a reduction in the ban which will still keep him out of rugby this year.
On sifting through the summary of evidence, they found he did not know how to find whether a drug was prohibited. He was not part of a high-performance programme after all. But should an NPC player get trawled up in this sting when the next wave comes out, he will cop a way longer holiday.
Pedersen had been having a tough, depressing time in his life, had packed on the beef, had a number of scary concussions and injuries which those of us close to club rugby knew about and hoped would not curtail his beloved football.
His spirits lifted when he was made OBM captain two years ago and this year deserved to be named Manawatu¯ ’s best and fairest player and not to have his name erased, despite these latter revelations.
Pedersen has been stood down under the old hypothesis that ignorance of the law doesn’t cut it. It didn’t get tennis player Maria Sharapova out of the dog box either when the meldonium she’d been taking was suddenly banned and she would have had to be a forensic email diagnostician to have discovered it.
After this, even club players will have to exercise what the judiciary describes as ‘‘utmost caution’’ because this publicity will serve as a warning. Naivety will get you nowhere.
Let’s flag risk-takers
Surf Life Saving Queensland has had a gutsful of most of their rescues having to be carried out outside the red and yellow flags on their beaches.
The Queensland surf boss has the answer. He wants Aussie citizenship and permanent residency applicants to be asked if they are prepared to swim between the flags.
Presumably if not, or if colourblind, then either go to New Zealand, where we have the same flags, or take a hike. Despite the publicity, it defies belief that families ignore the flagged, patrolled areas at our beaches in both countries.
Meanwhile, let the Auckland tennis outfit take a rest from inviting boring Spanish clay-court baseliners each year. Every year they applaud the return of David Ferrer, which is like installing a wall at one end of the court.