Designer drug cheats ‘can only be fought with more funding’
Head of parliamentary committee urges sports to invest some of their profits into doping authorities
SPORTING authorities need extra funding to tackle designer drugs, one of the world’s leading experts in doping has said.
Robin Parisotto, an Australian scientist who helped to develop one of the tests for the drug EPO, told The Daily Telegraph that if funds to detect drugs in sport were not increased, it “is never going to be reined in”.
The head of an influential parliamentary committee also called for doping authorities to have more resources to fight drug use by athletes, amid fears that some products have been created to avoid detection.
Damian Collins, the chairman of the culture, media and sport select committee, said sports should consider contributing to funding.
“The sports are increasingly commercially successful and they need to contribute themselves. They need to invest some of the money that they make to protect the integrity of their sport and the welfare of the athletes,” said Mr Collins. The comments follow a Telegraph investigation that revealed how Justin Gatlin has become embroiled in a new doping scandal after members of his team offered to illicitly supply performance-enhancing drugs.
Gatlin and his entourage are now being looked into by sports and doping authorities after The Telegraph investigation uncovered how members of his team offered to provide prescriptions in a false name and smuggle the substances to the United States.
Dennis Mitchell, the coach and the former Olympic gold medallist, and
‘Some of those athletes get more for appearance than the whole anti-doping budget for the whole world’
Robert Wagner, the agent, were also secretly recorded claiming that the use of banned substances in athletics was still widespread as they described how positive doping tests could be avoided.
In one meeting, the agent claimed that Gatlin had himself been taking performance enhancing drugs – which the sprinter has strenuously denied.
Renaldo Nehemiah, Gatlin’s agent for the last 14 years, said that Wagner had worked for Gatlin on no more than two or three occasions and that the sprinter was not present when banned substances were discussed with either the agent or coach.
However, there are fears that the authorities are not equipped to detect some substances that are being used, especially so-called “designer drugs”.
Dr Paul Dimeo, an expert in drug testing at Stirling University, said more funding was needed for better testing because of “new, designer drugs that are made to be undetectable”.
Mr Collins said that it appeared to be “rare” for sporting bodies to “uncover a problem themselves” and “generally the case that it is always investigative journalists who, working with whistleblowers, who identify problems”.
Mr Parisotto said more resources were needed, but it was “unbelievable to think that is ever going to happen”.
“I think it was Lord Coe who said that they were going to double their anti-doping budget but it’s a p--- in the bucket, its nothing,” he said.
“Some of those athletes earn more individually, get more for appearance than the whole anti-doping budget for the whole world. It’s just ludicrous.”
Gatlin’s legal representatives announced that he had sacked Mitchell and revealed more than five years’ worth of official drugs tests to show “he has never tested positive for any banned substance”.
Mitchell said in a statement that none of his current athletes were using banned substances. Wagner said he had informed the IAAF about the project and that he had not been doping athletes.