Doping In Sports Requires WADA Trim the Fat of Fitness

IBFF vs Drugs

• WADA Code Signatory
• Seminar by Tone
• Got To Be Kidding

Just how much corruption, cheating and doping in sports there actually is seems to depend on how cynical you are, with some still showing faith in the fair competitive spirit, and others, perhaps far less charitably, believing every sport is riddled with it. However that whilst 'are-they-aren't-they' binary is at least a plausible line of inquiry in most sports, in other fringe competitive endeavors it can seem a dubious waste of everyone's time.

If you like to bet on sports in Norway the chances are it's on a site like ComeOn! Sportsbook, or similar, a portal to an amazing variety of options, thousands of choices and a wealth of opportunities for the canny gambler, spread across the entire spectrum of the sporting world. However these days it's growing ever more difficult to know just which sports are being run honestly and which of them have been tainted by corruption.

In the past it was simple to avoid doping in sports. All you had to do was not bet on suspiciously spritely racehorses and not believe for a second that anyone rides around France in a couple of weeks without being on something a little stronger than his saddle. Sure there were the odd moments where it reared its ugly head in say athletics like with Ben Johnson at the Olympics, but otherwise no one questioned the rest. These days you'd be mad not to.

The tennis world is mired in story of who-knew-what-about-which-bribes-when sort of scandal, FIFA is so bent they've actually managed to break the space-time continuum (possibly by having Sepp Blatter sit on it), and the IAAF, indeed athletics as a whole, is now itself the new poster-boy for doping in sports. The World Anti-Doping Agency is fighting doping in sports wherever it can find it, which is, just about everywhere, but sometimes you wonder if they're not blind to the stunningly obvious.

The IFBB Signed Up To WADA Code......But Why?

WADA's efforts are, of course, crucial, although, it has to be said all the on-going revelations tend to reveal mostly that WADA hasn't been awfully effective as a deterrent. Indeed, given the corruption inside some national anti-doping efforts, one might wonder just how clean it is itself. That possible corruption aside, however, the issues with WADA don't really end, because some of the people it has allowed to sign up to its Code are dubious to say the least.

Aesop said “A man is known by the company he keeps”, which is fine if you're not an undercover policeman, and one has to question precisely why WADA has permitted certain 'sports' (and I use the term oh so loosely here people) to be associated with it. The fight against doping in sports is so urgent now that it can't afford to squander any gravitas, needing to retain its position and allow those that take advantage of Norwegian gambling laws to know they're getting a fair deal.

Even the former governor of California admitted that he was no clean back then (Photo: Youtube.com)

This means that when you discover the IFBB and NKF have an anti-doping committee that holds anti-doping seminars and claims the sport is “working in a serious and rigorous manner” to fight doping in sports, you tend to feel a little let down. Why? Because the IFBB is the International Federation of Bodybuilding and Fitness, and the NKF is their Norwegian national body. Now call me cynical, but anti-doping efforts in Bodybuilding? C'mon.....who you kidding?

WADA Fights Doping In Sports But Some Battles A Lost Cause

The seminar held recently, we're told, was chaired by Mrs. Tone Opheim, and was attended by some 30 'athletes' and coaches from the world of disproportionate body sculpting warning them about the dangers of doping in sport to their health and to their careers. Something you'd think most real athletes these days wouldn't actually need pointing out to them if WADA et al actually got around to punishing more than just the black-sheep of the athletics world and took down some big name stars.

Obviously there must be, somewhere, some bodybuilders and 'fitness' freaks that don't take steroids, it's just I can't honestly remember ever setting eyes upon any one of them that I'd bother asking to confirm that theory. Arnold Schwarzenegger admitted to use way back in the seventies and since then does anyone believe their use in this pseudo-sport has vanished? Of course not. One look and you know these fools are on something, and I'm gambling news releases from people like this do WADA no favors whatsoever.

WADA might have had the best of intentions when it allowed them to sign up in 2009, but times have changed and its priorities must change too. There's no time now to flog a dead horse, and attempting to rid bodybuilding and fitness of drug use is as near to postmortem equine flagellation as you are ever likely to see, and WADA should not allow these ridiculous body fascists to sully its good name and reputation, because it'll only be if it can rid itself of these lost causes that it has any hope of beating doping in sports once and for all.