Cheating at The Paralympic Games - Doping

Doping

Some professional and amateur sporting competitions randomly sample athletes to eliminate the use of performance-enhancing drugs, and the Paralympic Games are no different. The first positive results came in the 1992 Barcelona Games with five athletes found to have used banned substances. The 2000 Sydney Games saw fourteen athletes return a positive test, ten of which were in the powerlifting competition.

The Sydney 2000 Doping Control Program had the responsibility of ensuring that the games met the International Paralympic Medical and Anti-Doping Code and, for the first time in the sport, out-of-competition (OOC) testing was introduced. This meant that the testing window was much wider, with any competitor being called for a test at any point throughout the Games.

Nine powerlifters returned positive results before the competition and were promptly ejected. One further powerlifter and an athlete gave positive results after winning medals.

In the Salt Lake City Winter Paralympics in 2002 German cross country skier Thomas Oelsner gave a positive result after winning two gold medals. He was suspended for two years from all IPC events.

Another form of doping is "boosting", used by athletes with a spinal cord injury to induce autonomic dysreflexia and increase blood pressure. This was banned by the IPC in 1994 but is still an ongoing problem in the sport.