INVESTIGATION
The wonder drug developed for US Special Forces
THE reaction from British Olympians to The Mail on Sunday’s investigation into UK Sport’s use of ketones in the run up to London 2012 has been one of despair and dismay.
An academic and a prominent politician have also expressed their concerns that the government agency charged with allocating National Lottery money to Olympic and Paralympic sport should be pursuing marginal gains by using a substance developed for US Special Forces. That substance was still being researched and UK Sport couldn’t guarantee it would comply with anti-doping rules.
Jo Pavey, the 2014 European 5,000m champion who has represented GB at five Olympic Games, felt deep concern about the normalisation of such prohibitively expensive and potentially risky marginal gains.
‘It’s upsetting the way the sport is going with athletes trying to find gains they can get away with,’ said Pavey, who ran at London 2012 but wasn’t offered ketones.
‘It’s almost like nowadays athletes can’t compete on the world stage unless they are doing all this rubbish. It’s depressing, as you feel there is so much going on with people doing all sorts of things to the absolute limit.
‘Obviously there are people outright doping, but also it feels like some athletes are moving away from just training hard. It’s alarming that they’re trying to keep it all top secret and getting athletes to sign waiver forms.
‘Some athletes are trying to get marginal gains in pushing the boundaries with something other than hard training. They’re trying to encourage something that isn’t available to everybody.
‘ I feel it’s fine to use over the counter supplements like iron, zinc, magnesium but medications for medical conditions that athletes do not have and the use of stuff like synthetic ketones is a step too far. It is not in the spirit of competition and may also be harmful.’
Emma Jackson represented GB over 800m at the world championships in 2011 and believes that the injuries wh i c h ended her career were caused by the high levels of a thyroid drug she was prescribed by a UK Athletics doctor.
UKA ‘refute any suggestion that a UKA medical practitioner sought to gain a performance advantage by over-medicating an athlete on thyroxine.’ Jackson was perturbed by the language used by UK Sport in the documents seen. ‘I’m horrified that ( UK Sport) would test out an unknown substance on our athletes,’ she said. ‘Not only that, but then to make them sign waivers and non-disclosure agreements so that they could never speak out or complain if anything went wrong. ‘ They are playing with people’s lives — a failed drugs test could be the end of someone’s career. I am also totally amazed that any athlete agreed to these conditions.’ UK Sport did check the produ c t wi t h the World Anti-Doping Agency prior to embarking on the research and WADA said that it was not on the 2011 banned list. The research was approved by the UK Sport Research Advisory Group. However, waivers made it clear that UK Sport could not guarantee the substance would comply with WADA rules. UK Sport say waivers are standard and no athlete is put under pressure to participate.
Jon Brown spoke out throughout his career against doping and competed at three Olympic Games for GB, twice finishing fourth in the marathon.
He has since coached for Athletics Canada, where he now lives, and is a highly-respected voice on ethics in sport and has a perspective from outside the bubble of British sport. ‘ I’m not really surprised about it,’ he said.
‘Leading up to London there was an enormous amount of pressure to deliver medals with the amount of investment.
‘The whole existence of UK Sport probably depended on the results and the amount of medals Britain were going to win. If they had disappointed it would have been really hard to justify the amount of money that was going into sport.
‘Quite a few countries have these innovation projects going but they just don’t have the same financial backing. UK just play on a different level to other countries.
‘It’s very frivolous, going out on a limb, spending hundreds of thousands of pounds on something that maybe didn’t work in the end. Where’s the accountability?
‘When UK Sport was set up in 1997 I don’t know if there was enough real vision about how it was going to play out. They have never periodically assessed where this was heading.
‘It’s been 23 years of getting to this point and is this where you want to be? Where do you go from here? Because it’s going to get pretty dark. Is winning medals really that important?
‘I guess they see that in many sports cheating is going on and anti-doping isn’t as effective as it should be, so how do they remain competitive? It opens up doors to all kind of interventions.
‘If you look at the legacy of London 2012, you won a lot of medals but has it made a lot of difference to sport at a community level? That would be a hard argument to make. Spending hundreds of thousands of pounds on ketones seems absurd.’
ROGER PIELKE Jr, a US academic at the Univers i t y o f Co l o r a d o h a s researched, written and t aught extensively on these issues and said: ‘It is no longer a surprise that athletes, their teams, governing bodies and even governments are willing to go right up to the edge of what is allowed or ethical.’
Damian Collins, the former chair of the House of Commons Culture, Media and Sport Select Committee that frequently investigated inappropriate conduct in British sport, said: ‘It is concerning that UK Sport was encouraging athletes to take this substance without knowing for certain whether or not it was compliant with the WADA code.
‘ I f athletes f el t i n any way required to take it, it’s wrong they would have been left on their own to deal with the consequences.’