doping – blog

Maria Sharapova Is An Annoying Brand, Not A Vile Cheater

Maria Sharapova is set to return to competition on Wednesday at the Porsche Grand Prix in Stuttgart after receiving a wild card entry to the tournament. It will be her first tournament since she was banned from tennis for 15 months after testing positive for a banned substance last January. While the manner of her…

Maria Sharapova's Agent Blasts Players Criticizing Her Wild-Card Return

Following a two-year ban for doping, which was reduced to 15 months on appeal, Maria Sharapova is set to return to competition next week after she received a wild-card entry in Stuttgart. She was also given wild cards to Madrid and Rome. A handful of prominent players have questioned Sharapova receiving wild cards,…

Starling Marte Suspended 80 Games After Positive PED Test

All-Star Pirates outfielder Starling Marte has tested positive for the banned steroid Nandrolone and will be suspended for 80 games. Jon Heyman first reported the news and MLB confirmed shortly after.

WADA And The IOC Will Do Whatever They Please With Positive Tests

A report from German broadcast network ARD—which previously broadcast bombshells about FIFA corruption in Qatar and unpunished doping activity—claims that the IOC covered up doping cases from the 2008 Beijing Olympics. German journalist Hajo Seppelt reports that “in 2016 during the re-analysis for banned substances,…

Cycling's Doping Rules Don't Help Anyone

Team Sky is struggling. The Murdoch-funded cycling behemoth has won three of the past four Tours de France and will probably win this year’s edition of the race as well. The team has started this season well, with Colombian pipsqueak Sergio Henao winning an all-time Paris Nice by two seconds and do-it-all Polish star…

Team Sky Is Only Looking Shadier

Team Sky are one of the richest and most successful cycling teams in the world, and they’ve billed themselves as a completely clean cycling team—everybody on the team has to sign an agreement that they’ve never been involved in doping—the sort of squad that shows that riders can win without doping. Sky riders have…

Report: Alberto Salazar Had Nike Runners Abuse Prescription Meds And Break Anti-Doping Rules

England’s The Sunday Times reports that they have seen a document prepared by the United States Anti-Doping Agency (USADA) detailing use of the legal amino acid L-carnitine in “sometimes potentially unlawful” ways by British Olympian Mo Farah and six American members of the Nike Oregon Project—under the direction of…

Mark Hunt Sues Brock Lesnar, The UFC, And Dana White

UFC heavyweight Mark Hunt accused the UFC, Dana White, and Brock Lesnar of racketeering, fraud, breach of contract, and other charges in a lawsuit filed in Nevada federal court yesterday. The lawsuit seeks millions of dollars in compensatory and punitive damages.

How Sports' Idiotic War On Drugs Might've Helped Give Us President Trump

It begins with the cyclists, of course. Just before the 1998 Tour de France, a Belgian trainer named Willy Voet was arrested while crossing the border into France because his car was filled with a tremendous amount of performance-enhancing drugs. The subsequent investigation (which became known as the Festina Affair)…

Russians: Oh That Doping? Yeah, We Did It

Back in May, the former director of Russia’s anti-doping laboratory came forward with reports of widespread doping among Russian athletes at the 2014 Sochi Olympics. Grigory Rodchenkov, who had fled the country following a World Anti-Doping Agency investigation that implicated him, alleged that at least 15 of Russia’s 33 medal-winners from those Olympics had been involved.

Why Does Triathlon Have Such A Clean Image?

It is almost impossible to believe that cycling, track and field, and swimming aren’t rife with doping. A large swath of top cyclists have tested positive for PEDs or admitted doping; track and field had state-sponsored doping programs in Eastern Germany, China, and Russia, along with hundreds of other athletes testing positive for PEDs; swimming has had fewer widespread doping scandals, but dozens of swimmers have tested positive for PEDs, and the doping suspension and reinstatement of Yulia Efimova, and the doping accusations leveled at Katinka Hosszu, were huge stories at the Olympics.