The top analyst Mario Deavis demands improvements in the anti-doping fight-especially because there are more and more options for fraud.
Mario Deavis, the head of the renowned Cologne doping control laboratory, sees the anti-doping fight on the defensive and calls for more resources. “I think the distance between hunters and hunted has not been reduced in recent years as I had hoped,” said Deavis of the ARD doping editorial team. He justifies this with “the very significant pharmaceutical development”, which can give the dopers a lead over the testers and analysts.
According to Thevi’s potential for abuse, many of the substances that have not yet been admitted to clinically. “This means that we have to implement the new preparations that are located in the developments or have been removed from the developments,” says Deavis.
Aicar as an example of wild growth
One had to expect that “the possibilities of undermining the doping control system have grown and we should also significantly expand our test spectrum”. Deavis, Professor of Preventive Doping Research, has been heading the Institute of Biochemistry at the German Sports University and the doping control laboratory accredited by the World-Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) since 2017.
An example of the wild growth among substances that are likely to arouse interest in doping athletes concerns the synthetic offshoots of the body’s metabolism activator AICAR. Deavis developed a method of detection for synthetic Aicar in 2013. Every urine test of a doping control is examined on Aicar, but there is a catch.
No uniform limit values
“If there are strikingly high quantities in the urine, follow-up examinations are carried out. These follow-up examinations are used relatively rarely, since there are no precise and globally applicable action limit values from when a urine sample is considered conspicuous in the sense of the AICAR finding,” explains Deavis with a view to the worldwide non-existent test standards for an efficient hunting for Aicar-Dopern.
Mario Deavis in the doping control laboratory of the Cologne Sports University
In addition, synthetic means that are based on the body’s own substances are generally difficult to prove. Aicar, who is foreign to the body, can only be found for four to six hours after taking it in the body.
“Analysis procedure optimize”
An athlete has never been tested positively for AICAR abuse. The fact that it is still used in professional sports became clear, especially by the investigation in the “Operation Adlass”, a blood doping ring led by the German doctor Mark S.. As a result, cycling professional Björn Thurau was also blocked for dealing with Aicar, which, however, was only proven as a result of public prosecutor’s investigation and not by a doping test.
Only four of the world’s most than 150 AICAR-like preparations that are available on the market are on the doping ban. Practically not looking for them.
An anonymous whistle from the cycling scene described Aicar in the ARD documentary “Secret Doping: In Wide Shadow” as a “means of choice” under cycling professionals. Experts also fear that the so -called bioavailability of synthetic Aicar could have been improved in doping circles. This means that smaller amounts of the sometimes very expensive substances are required to achieve a doping effect.
“Analysis procedure optimize”
In order to reduce the distance to dopers in general, it requires more laboratory capacities, says Deavis, “but also more resources to expand the analysis procedures”.
A large part of their income generates Wada-accredited doping laboratories such as that in Cologne by analyzing doping controls, which are mainly commissioned by national and international sports associations and national anti-doping organizations. From the World Anti-Doping Agency, the laboratories receive primarily grants for research purposes.
The wada is currently under financially under pressure. The United States, the largest state donor in the World Anti-Doping Agency, had also put all donations in the possible coverage of suspicious cases under 23 Chinese top swimmers because of the role of global doping regulator.