Doping scandals ignored

[Firestarter]

For as long as I can remember, we’ve been getting stories that doping was rampant in cycling, but is now a thing of the past…

It is a blatant example of double standards that - with the majority of cycling heroes doping cheaters - that Lance Armstrong was retroactively stripped of his record-breaking 7 Tour de France victories, while ALL of his biggest competitors were juiced, and ALL his predecessor cycling champions were also using performance-enhancing drugs.
Lance Armstrong was probably punished so severely because he exposed how easy it had been to continue using banned drugs, while evading positive tests. Which really shows that the doping tests aren’t designed to find doping cheaters, but only to give the impression of “clean” sports.


The according to some greatest cyclist of all time, Eddy Merckx from Belgium, has tested positive for doping at least 3 times during his illustrious career.
In 1969, Merckx tested positive in the Giro d'Italia for fencamfamine (an amphetamine). Merckx was to be suspended for a month. First race director Vincenzo Torriani tried (and failed) to persuade the president of the Italian Cycling Federation to allow Merckx to continue in the Giro.
After pressure from the Kingdom of Belgium, the UCI removed the suspension within days, so Merckx could start in (and win) the Tour de France.

In October 1973, Merckx tested positive for norephedrine in the Giro di Lombardia that he won. Merckx was disqualified from the race, given a month's suspension and fined 150,000 lira.
On 8 May 1977, Merckx tested positive for the amphetamine pemoline at La Flèche Wallonne, and was given a 24,000 pesetas fine and a one-month suspension.

In 1993, Eddy Merckx publicly declared that he had used the urine of other cyclists, including Roger De Vlaeminck, to pass doping tests: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eddy_Merckx


According to many, Joop Zoetemelk is the greatest Dutch cyclist of all time. Zoetemelk is one of only 2 Dutch riders to ever win the Tour de France. At 38 years of age, Zoetemelk surprised everybody by becoming world champion.

Joop Zoetemelk was caught 3 times for using banned performance-enhancing drugs in the Tour de France.

In 1977, Zoetemelk tested positive for pemoline.
In 1979, Zoetemelk tested positive for nortestoron, and got a time penalty of 10 minutes.
In 1983, Zoetemelk tested positive for nandrolon, and got a time penalty of 10 minutes and a fine of 1400 guilders.

In 1983, several other cyclists also tested positive for doping, including Marc Sergeant, Adri van der Poel (father of 7 times world champion Mathieu van der Poel) and Pascal Simon: (in Dutch) https://www.touretappe.nl/tour-de-france-1983/etappe-11-tdf-1983/

 

[Anti Globalist]

If I were competing in any sport, you would not see me doping.

 

[TheTexan]

If I were competing in any sport, you would not see me doping.

Yes, I would not be seen doping, either.

 

[Firestarter]

If I were competing in any sport, you would not see me doping.

I guess that if YOU were competing in sport, not many would come to see...

There has not been a positive dope test in the Tour de France in almost 10 years.
The currently best cyclist in the world, Tadej Pogacar, is faster than Lance Armstrong in his prime, and doesn’t limit his dominance to only the most important race in the year. Pogacar’s UAE (yes, the UAE again…) team leaders Mauro Gianetti and Joxean Fernández Matxin were previously working for the Saunier Duval team, which had several positive doping cases, including of Iban Mayo, Leonardo Piepoli and Riccardo Riccò.

A former professional cyclist who rode in a top team has “noticed that doping continued", including EPO which is still popular in microdosing.
The banned performance enhancing drug Aicar, that appeared in the 2010s, plays a major role today.

Doping expert Oliver Catlin has explained why the measures of the “anti”-doping institution against Aicar are almost ineffective. Firstly because the detection window for the substance is very short, and also as of the 166 Aicar-like drugs only 4 (!) appear on the WADA banned list.

If I were an athlete, would I take Aicar knowing it's on the prohibited list? Or would I rather take Aicar's relatives who are not on the prohibited list?

"Doping Top Secret: In the Slipstream" - Aicar and "extraterrestrials": ARD documentary reignites doping discussion

Cycling insiders have spent years insisting that professional cycling has learned the lessons of its dark past. New research from the ARD doping editorial team concludes differently.

www.sportschau.de

(https://archive.is/oaKUx)


Professional cycling still includes convicted doping offenders or those investigated, in 14 of the 18 World Tour teams.

An investigation by Austrian and German police into a blood-doping ring being run from a clinic in Erfurt, Operation Aderlass, in 2019 arrested doctor Mark Schmidt, who had a freezer filled with 40 blood bags.
Danilo Hondo testified that he paid Schmidt €25,000 for blood doping in 2012.
In January 2021, Schmidt was sentenced to almost 5 years in jail.

Prosecutors investigated "up to 20" people who were involved with Mark Schmidt, like David Rozman, that for some reason weren’t charged, mostly in pro cycling.
David Rozman chatted with Schmidt in 2012 and 2013. Rozman was a masseur that moved from a Slovenian club team to the Slovenian national team, to the Milram pro team in Germany.
Rozman continued his career for “the famous” Team Sky.

On 9 June 2012, a month before Team Sky would dominate the Tour de France, Rozman sent a message to Schmidt:

Do you still have any of the stuff that Milram used during the races? If so, can you bring it for the boys?

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Rozman connected his friend Schmidt to a drug dealer — with codename ‘Maestro Balthazar’ — who would supply banned substances like Aicar and TB500.
Rozman was also funding another accomplice to buy blood doping equipment from companies in Vienna and Ljubljana.

Rozman is currently the head carer at Team Ineos Grenadiers, the new name for Team Sky. He was sent home from the Tour de France, after the reports on his connection to Schmidt: https://www.independent.ie/sport/ot...doctor-at-the-tour-de-france/a1278964315.html
(https://archive.is/Z9Nen)


In the 2010s, Team Sky dominated the Tour de France, with Bradley Wiggins winning in 2012, followed by Chris Froome (2013, 2015, 2016 and 2017), Geraint Thomas (2018) and Egan Bernal (2019).

The list of athletes associated with Mark Schmidt included decorated sprinter Alessandro Petachi.
The managing director of the Bahrain–Mérida team, Milan Erzen, asked Schmidt for help setting up blood doping for his team. Erzen still runs a top-level cycling team. Milram was disbanded after 2010.

The 2016 Fancy Bears Russian hack showed that Team Sky was using therapeutic use exemptions (TUE) to be allowed to give its riders otherwise prohibited asthma-fighting corticosteroids.
Months later British Cycling announced an investigation into an incident before the 2011 Tour in which a courier hand-delivered Wiggins a package with some sort of mysterious medical something in a jiffy bag.

In 2023, Richard Freeman was banned for 4 years for violating the doping rules as team doctor for Team Sky: https://defector.com/an-anatomy-of-the-doping-story-that-has-the-tour-de-france-press-room-buzzing
(https://archive.is/l8Sow)

 

[Firestarter]

Dutch cyclist Leontien van Moorsel, that had already retired in 1996 to return in 1998 after having been a world champion several times in the early 1990s, won an impressive 3 gold and 1 silver medals at the 2000 Sydney Olympics, winning another gold medal at the 2004 Olympics in Athens.

In 2017, retired Dutch cycling doctor Peter Janssen exposed that he had administered EPO to Van Moorsel in the spring of 2000, before the Sydney Olympics: (in Dutch) https://archive.is/UFt27


From 1986 to 1989, Janssen had been the team doctor for the PDM cycling team.
Janssen gave the PDM cyclists blood transfusions that had been banned since 1986 (but couldn’t really be detected in the doping tests).
In 2013, extracts from the notebook of PDM soigneur Bertus Fok were published, which showed that 7 of the 8 PDM cyclists at the 1988 Tour used banned substances.

Gert-Jan Theunisse and Steven Rooks were the biggest stars for PDM at the time.
Theunisse tested positive for testosterone in the 1988 Tour de France for which he only got a 10 minute time penalty (a common practice at the time after a positive doping test). In 1989, Theunisse was back in the Tour to win the king of the mountains title.

In 1990, Peter Janssen moved to the Panasonic team with Rooks and Theunisse.
In 1991, PDM withdrew from the Tour due to problems with their “saline drips” that are often used to disguise doping abuse: https://www.cyclingnews.com/news/van-moorsel-denies-using-epo-ahead-of-sydney-olympics/
(https://archive.is/9W9cY)

 

[Firestarter]

It seems like a disproportionate amount of the most fraudulent sport stars (that often got away with doping throughout their careers) have been sponsored by Nike.

In 1992, an interesting book was published: Julie Strasser and Laurie Becklund - "Swoosh: the unauthorized Story of Nike and the Men Who Played There".
Unfortunately I couldn’t find a freely readable version of this book on the internet…

The books includes allegations of widespread steroid use by Nike-sponsored athletes and under-the-table bribes to amateur competitors, organised by Nike.
Much of this cheating was related to the Nike-sponsored Athletics West.

Athletics West’s Jeff Drenth died after a workout in 1986, aged 24, the cause of his death remains unknown…
Marathon runner Alberto Salazar joined Athletics West in the early 1980s.

In 1996, American running legend Mary Decker had tested positive for high levels of testosterone, shortly before she qualified for the 5K at the Atlanta Olympics, at an age of 37. She was stripped of her silver medal in the 1500-meter race at the 1997 World Indoor Championships.
Salazar was coaching Decker at the time: https://web.archive.org/web/20160306063208/articles.latimes.com/1992-01-16/sports/sp-227_1_nike


In 2015, a whistleblower exposed that the Cuban-born top track coach Alberto Salazar, a personal friend of Nike founder Phil Knight, was giving banned performance-enhancing drugs (including testosterone) to his athletes at the Nike Oregon Project in Oregon, with the active involvement of Nike.
Strangely it took until 2019 before Salazar was banned for 4 years (after a USADA “investigation”), while none of his athletes, that included world class runners, got any suspension (let alone Nike)…
In 2021, Salazar was finally banned for life, not for providing his athletes with doping but for “abuse”. Maybe strange of me to think that training top athletes IS “abuse”…

After his career running marathons, Alberto Salazar became a sports marketing executive with Nike, and in 2001 helped to form the Nike Oregon Project.
Dr. Jeffrey Brown (that was also banned in 2019) briefed Nike’s chief executive Mark Parker on the Nike Oregon Project’s doping practices. Brown informed Parker on the experiments done on the effects of the performance enhancing drugs and how they could be used without being detected.

When the testing came back from Aegis Labs on July 7, 2009, Dr. Brown wrote an email to Nike CEO Mark Parker,

‘We have preliminary data back on our experiments with a topical male hormone called Androgel …
We found that even though there was a slight rise in T/E ratios, it was below the level of 4 which would trigger great concern …
We are next going to repeat it using 3 pumps …
We need to determine the minimal amount of gel that would cause a problem.’

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After years of the Nike Oregon Project’s sporadic successes, the English Mo Farah became and Olympic champion for the Nike Oregon Project, winning the 5,000 meters and the 10,000 meters at the 2012 and 2016 Olympics. The Nike doping Project’s Galen Rupp also won silver at the 10,000 meters at the 2012 London Olympics.
See Alberto Salazer celebrating with Galen Rupp (left) and Mo Farah (right) at the London 2012 Olympics.

While Farah tried to distance himself from Alazar since 2017, Sifan Hassan, that won multiple medals for the Netherlands despite being born and raised in Ethiopia, started to be coached by Alberto Salazar at the Nike Oregon Project in 2017. Hassan won gold in the 1500 and 10,000 metres at the 2019 world championship and in the 5,000 and 10,000 metres at the Tokyo Olympics in 2021.
After Alazar was banned, Hassan continued to be coached by Tim Rowberry, Salazar's assistant at the Nike Oregon project since July 2018.

Other top athletes that were trained by Salazar include Yomif Kejelcha (Ethiopia), Konstanze Klosterhalfen (Germany), Craig Engels (US), and Jessica Hull (Australia, who was my starting point in my investigation into Salazar and Nike): https://archive.is/rdfL9


The following was already reported in 2015 (strangely USADA didn’t add anything important in 4 years of “investigation”)…
Alberto Salazar was giving the American Galen Rupp “testosterone and prednisone medication”, when he was only 16…
Many were surprised at how much Rupp improved in 2011 and 2012.

An anonymous runner at Salazar’s Nike Oregon project in 2007 went to see Dr Loren Myhre (that passed away in 2012), who…

suggested that I go and see an endocrinologist that Alberto and most of the athletes work with, to get testosterone and thyroid. He said: ‘This is what Alberto does. You’ll feel better and you’ll be able to train better,’ and so then I said: ‘Well, isn’t that cheating?’ And he goes: ‘Well no, Alberto does it.’ I did mention something about being, like: ‘Wouldn’t it test positive?’ He said: ‘No, no, no. We’ll get you into the normal range.’

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In 2008, Alberto Salazar acquired AndroGel (a banned cream with steroids) to use on his athletes: http://www.theguardian.com/sport/2015/jun/25/allegations-alberto-salazar-response

 

[Firestarter]

One of the most famous Olympic doping scandals is when the gold medallist Ben Johnson, that ran a 100 meter world record of 9.79 seconds, was banned after a positive doping test for the anabolic steroid Stanozolol in Seoul in 1988.
The 100 meter final at the 1988 Seoul Olympics would be called “the dirtiest race in history”, with 5 of the 8 competitors failing drug tests throughout their careers.

Arguably the most interesting of these is the “clean” Carl Lewis that won gold after Johnson lost his medal.
Notice the shoulder on Carl Lewis, and the big arms of Ben Johnson.

In 2003, Dr. Wade Exum blew the whistle and revealed documents that implicated Lewis had tested positive 3 times at the 1988 US Olympic trials.
In one document, Lewis was informed that he’d tested positive for banned substances and would not be permitted to participate in the Seoul Olympics, a letter addressed to Lewis from executive director of USOC Baaron Pittenger stated:

I must confirm that the analysis for your specimen B was positive for pseudoephedrine, ephedrine and phenylpropanolamine, IOC banned stimulants. By policy of the USOC this finding is cause for disqualification from Olympic team for the 1988 summer games in Seoul, Korea.

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Lewis was of course not disqualified, after giving some explanation that it was in some supplement he took without knowing that it contained doping.

According The Telegraph, 75 American athletes tested positive during this period, but none were sanctioned.
According to Exum, American athletes were exposed to non-punitive testing throughout the early 80s to help educate athletes on how to avoid positive tests while using PEDs.

The world perception is that the USOC does not run a doping control program, they run a controlled doping program.

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British sprinter Linford Christie, who got the 100 meter silver behind Lewis, also tested positive for a banned stimulant after the 1988 100 meter Olympic final but was exonerated by the IOC’s disciplinary committee by a vote of 11 to 10.
Christie continued his career to win the Olympic 100 meter gold in 1992.
In 1999, Christie tested positive for Nandrolone and was banned for 2 years.

The American Dennis Mitchell, who finished 4th at the 1988 Olympic 100 meter, was also banned for 2 years in 1998 for high levels of testosterone.
In 2008, Mitchell testified that Trevor Graham had injected him with human growth hormone. Graham was part of the silver medal-winning Jamaican 4 × 400 m team at the 1988 Summer Olympics: https://thegenuinetailender.wordpress.com/2015/05/13/carl-lewis-a-dope-or-olympic-sized-cheat/
(https://archive.is/iC1DH)


Many noticed that Florence Griffith-Joyner in 1988 had suddenly grown very muscular and that also her voice had become much deeper.
Also look at Flo-Jo’s shoulders (without her face and breasts, this looks like a muscular male)…

In 1987, Flo-Jo wasn’t nr. 1 in any category. Before 1988, she had relatively modest best times of 10.96 in the 100 and 21.96 for the 200 meter.
The world records Flo-Jo set in 1988, 10.49 seconds for the 100 and 21.34 seconds for the 200 meter, to this day have never been broken.

Florence Griffith-Joyner suddenly retired in 1989, shortly after random blood tests had been announced.
Making her career as the nr. 1 female sprinter, a total of 3 months in 1988…

The American sprinter Darrell Robinson said he sold Florence Griffith-Joyner vials of HGH in 1988, and saw Carl Lewis inject himself with probably testosterone. Griffith-Joyner called Robinson a “lying lunatic”, and Robinson was blacklisted…
Darrell Robinson also claimed to have received steroids from Flo-Jo’s coach Bob Kersee, the husband of Jacqueline Joyner-Kersee, who was also the sister of Flo-Jo’s husband (and coach), Olympic champion triple jumper Al Joyner.

Jacqueline Joyner-Kersee won gold medals in both the heptathlon and the long jump at the 1988 Summer Olympics.
Doping insider Victor Conte claimed that he personally witnessed in 1988 that an Olympic official notified Bobby Kersee that Joyner-Kersee had tested positive for doping.

On 21 September 1998, Griffith-Joyner suddenly died in her sleep aged 38.
While the official listed cause of death was suffocation from an epileptic seizure, many suspected that her death was the result of doping:
(https://archive.is/ZkgB5)

 

[Firestarter]

One of the most famous Olympic doping scandals is when the gold medallist Ben Johnson, that ran a 100 meter world record of 9.79 seconds, was banned after a positive doping test for the anabolic steroid Stanozolol in Seoul in 1988.

Ben Johnson wasn’t sponsored by Nike, switching from Adidas to Diadora in 1988 before the Olympics. After being scrapped from the 100 meter, the Nike-sponsored Carl Lewis (that had tested positive 3 times earlier in the year) won the 1988 Olympic gold medal…
Ben Johnson has explained that he could never have tested positive at the 1988 Seoul Olympics, as he had stopped taking performance-enhancing drugs long enough to prevent a positive test. He wasn’t even taking the drug stanozolol, that he supposedly tested positive for, prior to that Games at all…

He also gave a glimpse on how doping tests and bans work:

I will tell the world that the system is a fraud. It’s a systematic fraud and they never can be trusted. They pick and choose who they want to protect and who they want to test positive. That’s not right, that’s just not right.

The reason I tested positive is that I left Adidas and went to Diadora. They didn’t like that. I’m telling you facts. It’s all about money.

SIMMONS: Controversial sprinter Ben Johnson holds nothing back in World's Fastest Man

Ben Johnson was outspoken and surprisingly controversial in conversation with Steve Simmons about the new book, World's Fastest Man.

torontosun.com

(https://archive.is/kTcnk)

Darrell Robinson also claimed to have received steroids from Flo-Jo’s coach Bob Kersee, the husband of Jacqueline Joyner-Kersee, who was also the sister of Flo-Jo’s husband (and coach), Olympic champion triple jumper Al Joyner.

400-meter hurdles world record holder Sydney McLaughlin-Levrone, who successfully defended her Olympic title in Paris in an amazing 50.37 seconds, is coached by none other than Bob Kersee!
McLaughlin-Levrone set her first 400-meter hurdles world record in July 2019, in a then considered incredible 51.90 seconds.

McLaughlin-Levrone married former NFL football player Andre Levrone Jr. in 2022.
In the NFL, without blood doping tests, abuse of performance-enhancing drugs is rampant.

 

[Firestarter]

Here is insider Victor Conte Jr. that was at the centre of the BALCO scandal; he spent a total of 4 months in prison, and made millions of dollars.
Conte shows that the doping testing is as corrupt as politicians, and easy to circumvent, up until the 2024 Paris Olympics. Which essentially makes it allowed to use doping in professional sports.

 

[Firestarter]

I’m certainly not the only one to think that the Jamaican sprinters dominating the world stage since 2008 are suspicious.
While in 1988 it was impossible to run the 100 m. in 9.79 seconds without doping, Usain Bolt ran world records of 9.72 and 9.69 seconds in 2008. Especially the second of these, that won him gold at the Beijing Olympics, was amazing, in which Bolt obliterated the rest of the field and already started celebrating 20 meters before the finish line, or he would have probably run more than 0.10 seconds faster.

Before 2008, Bolt’s personal best on the 100 meter was 10.03 seconds…
At the 2009 World Championships, Bolt ran his personal best world record of 9.58 seconds, a time that could remain the world record for another decade.

In time a lot of top 100 m. sprinters have been caught with banned performance-enhancing drugs. All the sprinters running top 40 times (when the article was written in 2016) on the 100 meter sprint have been caught with doping (all of them Jamaicans and Americans), except for the amazing Usain Bolt.

In 2009, 5 Jamaican athletes tested positive for doping, the first year that JADCO was actually doing doping tests on Jamaican athletes. Two of these athletes belonged to the Racers Track Club and were coached by Glen Mills, like Usain Bolt. The 5 athletes - Yohan Blake, Marvin Anderson, Allodin Fothergill, Lansford Spence and Sheri-Ann Brooks - were banned for a mere 3 months by the Jamaica Anti-Doping Commission.
The Jamaican team doctor was Herb Elliot, who became chairman of the Jamaican “anti” doping agency JADCO. In 2012, JADCO conducted only 106 tests, while in 2012 Iceland conducted 113, Iran 181, the US 4,051, UK 5,971 and China 10,066 doping tests.
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Even WADA found that JADCO needed to do more (better?) doping tests:

Less than a month after World Anti-Doping Agency officials visited Jamaica to conduct what the nation’s minister for sport called an “extraordinary audit,” the entire board of the Jamaica Anti-Doping Commission and its chairman, Dr. Herb Elliot, have resigned.
…
As Simon Hart of the Telegraph in the UK reports, JADCO’s former executive director, Renee Anne Shirley, revealed in a Sports Illustrated article that the organization conducted only one out-of-competition drug test in the five months leading up to the 2012 Olympics, that it had never conducted a blood test on an athlete, and that it was perpetually understaffed.

https://archive.is/R6DOs

Usain Bolt was treated by the controversial German doctor Hans-Wilhelm Muller-Wohlfahrt, who was already a team doctor for Bayern München in 1977.
Muller-Wohlfahrt performed some strange medical experiments on his clients: https://www.espn.com/espn/otl/story...fahrta-great-healer-quack-hyperactive-syringe


At the 2008 Beijing Olympics (where Usain Bolt won 3 gold medals, also setting world records at the 200 m individually and the 4x100m relay), clenbuterol was detected in “several” unnamed Jamaican sprinters’ urine samples.
The IOC for some strange reason decided to not pursue the cases.

The IOC argued that because in China clenbuterol was used to increase the weight of cattle they figured that the cases couldn’t pass a legal banning proceeding.
That’s despite that the organisers of the 2008 Games took precautions to ensure meat was clean, and the Jamaican team flew in their own meat from home…

It’s obvious that some athletes are more “equal” that others, as some get banned for the same doping violations for which others get a free pass (often coming up with some BS explanation, like contaminated supplements).
In 2011, WADA and FIFA likewise decided not to pursue positive clenbuterol cases against “scores” of soccer players: https://www.vice.com/en/article/did...maican-sprinter-doping-tests-its-complicated/


According to some “conspiracy theorists” Usain Bolt is a member of the “illuminati”.
Bolt has blatantly been showing off masonic hand gestures, and even wore a freemasonic ring (with the square and compass) in an official video for the Singapore 2010 youth Olympic Games..

See another rumoured illuminati member, Ellen DeGeneres, riding the GOAT (Usain the “greatest of all time” sprinter)…

Stuff

www.newshub.co.nz

 

[Firestarter]

It is obviously quite common to cover up doping scandals in sports, by media hysterias over abuse. I think that coaching top athletes is sort of abuse, and a coach having sex with adult athletes, is dubious but nowhere near as scandalous as abuse of performance-enhancing drugs.
While many suspicions on athletes are posted online, elite sprinting coach Rana Reider gets hardly any suspicion…

While top American track coach Rana Reider (2011 Nike Coach of the Year) hasn’t been banned, he was suddenly prohibited from coaching “his” athletes at the Paris Olympics, after he was accused of sexual and emotional abuse by 3 female athletes in a lawsuit in Florida.
Reider had been coaching among others Olympic 200 meter champion Andre De Grasse (Canada) at the Paris Olympics: https://www.msn.com/en-us/sports/ot...hdrawn-over-sex-abuse-allegations/ar-AA1oinro


In 2014, the married Rana Reider had an affair with an 18-year-old British athlete, when he was 44. Reider got a probation over this affair.

One of Rana Reider’s pupils was the Nigerian sprinter Blessing Okagbare (sponsored by Nike) that was withdrawn from the Olympics in Tokyo in 2021 and banned for testing positive for human growth hormone and EPO.
A lot of men would be proud for having shoulders like Blessing Okagbare.

Rana Reider has also been coaching 2016 Olympic triple jump champion and current world champion Christian Taylor: https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sport/o...-ongoing-sexual-misconduct-investigation.html


If I understand correctly, Rana Reider only started coaching Italian sprinter Lamont Marcell Jacobs (sponsored by Nike) after his surprising wins in the 100 meter both individually and in the relay at the Tokyo Olympics, setting a European record of 9.80 seconds.
Because Marcell Jacobs was such a relative mediocre athlete he was not included in the Athletics Integrity Unit’s elite drug testing pool, so wasn’t tested out of competition before the Tokyo Olympics (and in 2020 didn’t compete at all…). He had only broken the ten-second mark for the 100 meters for the first time in 2021, and had never even won a medal at European championships. At the 2024 Olympics in Paris he finished a respectable 5th in the final.

After Jacobs shocking wins, “nutritionist” Giacomo Spazzini boasted that (you could call taking steroids, “something more”…):

In a year of work together, we increased his muscle mass by four kilograms and reduced his body fat by 4 per cent, all through correct nutrition. He used to eat to stay in shape, but needed something more to make that leap in quality.

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Giacomo Spazzini was really a bodybuilder personal trainer that earlier in 2021 was investigated and charged by the Italian cops for the illegal distribution of anabolic steroids – human growth hormone, testosterone and nandrolone - in the “bodybuilding world”.
After some non-Italian media outlet exposed Spazzini supplying performance-enhancing drugs to his clients, Jacobs’s agent, Marcello Magnani, claimed that Jacobs had stopped working with Spazzini when he first heard of the allegations “in March 2021”. So he admitted that Spazzini had supplied him with “supplements” (I guess) until March 2021…

WADA tried to ban Giacomo Spazzini for 15 years, but couldn’t as bodybuilding doesn’t fall under their jurisdiction.

Marcell Jacobs didn’t compete for the rest of 2021 after the Olympics, and didn’t make many appearances in later years, after his surprising Olympic gold medals, even though he would have received major appearance fees.
The official explanation seems to be injuries and being tired (!?!): https://archive.is/0U5ds

 

[Firestarter]

One of Rana Reider’s pupils was the Nigerian sprinter Blessing Okagbare (sponsored by Nike) that was withdrawn from the Olympics in Tokyo in 2021 and banned for testing positive for human growth hormone and EPO.

Dafne Schippers from the Netherlands (sponsored by Nike) was one of the top sprinters in the world for several years, world champion in the 200 meter in 2015 and 2017, when she was coached by Rana Reider.
Many found her sudden huge improvement, muscular appearance, and acne suspicious.

See the muscular Dafne Schippers at the Rio de Janeiro Olympic in 2016, where she won silver in the 200 meter.

She retired earlier than she would’ve liked because of back injuries: https://femuscleblog.wordpress.com/2016/11/15/dafne-schippers/

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There were questions about the acne on Schippers back and face, which can be a sign of steroid abuse. But the Dutch journalists I spoke to all said the same thing: her mum and sister had both had acne, and that it was hereditary. As Mark van Driel, a writer for de Volkskrant, put it: “I have known Dafne since she was 16 and I believe her, because I have asked all the difficult questions many times and her answers are always convincing. Her coach, Bart Bennema, is always open too.”

The respected Dutch agent Michel Boeting, who has known Bennema for two decades, went further. “It may be a strong statement but I would bet my house on Bart,” he says. “If he needs to cheat to win he would leave the sport. I 100% trust him.” Boeting had no doubts about Schippers either, and confirmed the story about her sister and mother’s acne.

Dafne Schippers’ world championship success should not mean instant suspicion | Sean Ingle

The Dutch 200m winner Dafne Schippers’ stunning performance has opened her up to scrutiny but there are compelling reasons to regard her achievement without cynicism

www.theguardian.com

 

[Firestarter]

One of Rana Reider’s pupils was the Nigerian sprinter Blessing Okagbare (sponsored by Nike) that was withdrawn from the Olympics in Tokyo in 2021 and banned for testing positive for human growth hormone and EPO.

In 2017-2018, Madiea Ghafoor was coached by Rana Reider.
In June 2019, Ghafoor was arrested by the German police for smuggling more than 50 kilograms of drugs (crystal meth and ecstasy) from the Netherlands. Madiea Ghafoor defended herself by claiming that she didn’t know it were narcotics, but thought that she was smuggling doping for herself and other athletes.
While Ghafoor admitted to taking performance-enhancing drugs, she refused to say which.

As there are no “border checks” between Germany and the Netherlands since Schengen, it is very surprising that these drugs were found in her car in a “routine border check” …
On 4 November 2019, Ghafoor was sentenced by the German court to 8 1/2 years in jail.

Madiea Ghafoor was part of the Netherlands squad at the 2016 Summer Olympics for the women’s 4x400m relay (before Femke Bol was included).
Ghafoor together with Femke Bol, Lieke Klaver and Lisanne de Witte had qualified for the women’s 4x400m relay at the 2019 world championships in Doha (Qatar). Bol, Klaver and De Witte all won medals at last year’s Olympics.

See the muscular Madiea Ghafoor in 2017 (she even seems to have an adam’s apple and beard stubble!).

(in Dutch) https://archive.is/ZwQiR

 

[Firestarter]

In the 1980s, the East-German women ruled supreme in long-distance speedskating (probably using doping). The Dutch Yvonne van Gennip could often compete for second place, but almost never won. In one of those great sport surprises, Van Gennip at the 1988 winter Olympics in Calgary won 3 gold medals, setting 2 world records, winning all 3 “long” distances: 1,500, 3,000 and 5,000 meter.
This looked very suspicious to me, and there is indeed circumstantial evidence that suggests that the Dutch skaters were using steroids in the mid to late 1980s…

At the Sarajevo Olympic Games in February 1984, the Dutch skaters didn’t win a single medal. Van Gennip did best with a fifth place in the 3,000 meters, but all the medals went to the East German and Russian women.
Coach for the national women’s team, Tjaart Kloosterboer, then recruited doctor Rob Pluijmers to help the skaters become competitive again.

Rob Pluijmers was a researcher at Organon, one of the largest pharmaceutical companies in the Netherlands.
Since the early 1980s, Organon produced the testosterone pills Andriol (a.k.a. brown balls). Andriol was (is?) popular among top athletes. Lance Armstrong's US Postal cycling team for example used them.

Besides Tjaart Kloosterboer and Rob Pluijmers also Harm Kuipers, chairman of the medical committee of the Dutch skating association KNSB, spoke in favour of anabolic steroids for Dutch skaters. In September 1984, Kuipers published an article in which he argues that female skaters should be given the banned substance testosterone, “If you want a woman to train and exercise like a man, you will also have to let her use the male hormone”.

In the summer of 1984, Rob Pluijmers gave “extensive information about testosterone” at a training camp for the Dutch skaters at the request of Tjaart Kloosterboer, who told Pluijmers that the women skaters must use steroids (including testosterone).

Then in January 1985 at the “allround” European Speed Skating Championships in Groningen (in the Netherlands), Yvonne van Gennip and Ria Visser surprised everybody by giving serious competition to the East-German women, both finishing in the top 4.
On 13 January 1985, the urine samples of Van Gennip and Visser were stolen from the the Radboud hospital before they were analysed. This is covered up by the Dutch skating association KNSB with the help of the International Skating Union (ISU).
The doorman at the hospital from where the urine samples were stolen identifies doctor for the Dutch skaters, Rob Pluijmers, as the perpetrator.

See Yvonne van Gennip getting awarded the gold medal after the 3 km in Calgary, with DDR skaters Andrea Schöne (on the left) and Gabi Schönbrunn (right).

In 2012, Rob Pluijmers explained that in the 1980s, steroids were given in professional sports because there was no out of competition testing.
Former cyclist Maarten Ducrot has exposed that doctor Pluijmers gave him banned Andriol testosterone pills. As there were no out of competition tests, he could take them without risk during training periods.

Despite all of this evidence all involved strongly deny that Dutch skaters received any banned performance enhancing drugs.
Apparently the doctors for the Dutch national skating team gave them pills and injections. Ria Visser has told that she got “vitamin and flu injections” without asking “what's in there”, but claims that she “didn't knowingly or unknowingly used” doping…

Nobody would be surprised if the “dirty” communist East-Germany stasi gave professional athletes health-destroying doping without them knowing. It looks like this is exactly what happened in the “clean” kingdom of the Netherlands: (in Dutch) https://archive.is/ngZrL


Jan Ykema has talked about being offered anabolic steroids by doctor of the KNSB, Rob Pluijmers, in the 1980s. Ykema won the 500 m silver medal at the 1988 Calgary Olympic Games, which was arguably an even greater surprise than the 3 gold medals of Van Gennip. Ykema denied to have used banned substances. But got an injection with “vitamins” from Pluijmers every 3 weeks (just like the evil East-Germans did?!?). I don’t know what kind of vitamins are injected per 3 weeks…
Ykema was such a poor skater that he didn’t even compete for a whole year in 1985-1986. Without out of competition tests, he could have juiced during that period. Even in his top year, 1988, Jan Ykema only finished 6th at the world sprint championship (his other “top” placings in this event were 18 and 12 in 1987 and 1989).

An anonymous female skater said that doctor Rob Pluijmers informed her about and gave her an Andriol testosterone pill that she refused to take.
Pluijmers told her “that a number of teammates had their testosterone levels supplemented”.

Another 5 Dutch professional skaters at the time also said that coach Tjaart Kloosterboer suggested to them to take doping, “if you want to be better than the Germans, you have to do the stuff”: (in Dutch) https://web.archive.org/web/2018121...alige-profschaatsers-voor-het-eerst~bad3c7b4/