With the scandal surrounding the Russian track and field team for the upcoming Rio Olympics, I am reminded of my own experience as a short term member of Canada's Track and Field team. I entered track quite late in life - 1994 to be exact. This was 6 years after the Ben Johnson affair, after the Dubin enquiry and all the shame that it brought to Athletics Canada and the country in general, so my experience was shaped significantly by these events. I personally never saw any evidence that any drugs were in use. I never saw anyone giving each other needles in the change room, a practice that I heard from a close friend had once been commonplace at the Metropolitan track and field center where I trained. I was never approached by anyone offering me any illegal substances. We were schooled extensively by medical staff before any international competition on substances that were illegal that we might not even know about (anything with Sudafed for example - so I have always had a hard time believing someone was taking anything "by mistake"). I was drug tested 3 times; once randomly during the training season and given 3 days to show up and pee in a bottle; and twice with my placing at the Canadian track and field championships where I was escorted for a test immediately after the competition was over. Any undesired activity that was happening was kept on the down low; the Canadian centre for ethics in sport and the Canadian anti-doping program were doing their best to minimize the chance of another scandal. Canada had incurred enough humiliation.
So, am I surprised by the information coming out about the Russian athletics team, or the government instituted cover-ups? Not really. There were always rumors alluding to this kind of activity (both the use and the cover-ups) I had a friend who was approached by Charlie Francis who was still coaching despite his life-long ban - suggesting something new. There was a local doctors that gave "vitamin B12" injections to help performance (ironically, the same Dr who did my random drug test... hmmm). And those were just local rumours. At the time the Americans never seemed to get caught - why was that? Did they just have deeper pockets? (this was before the Marion Jones scandal). How did some athletes get so big or so strong so quickly? or recover from injury so fast? Athletes are always on the edge of injury and overtraining, especially when it comes down to centimeters or 100ths of seconds, and anything that will allow you to train harder or have faster recovery would be very tempting, especially if it was something new and there was minimal chance of discovery. And when there are even larger egos on the line (coaches, government officials and a whole country), I am even less surprised that this has occurred.
Saddened, but not surprised.
This blog is written by Rebecca Chambers, physiotherapist at MacLean Sport Physiotherapy. For more information on our staff, treatment and services please visit our
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