Illegal Use in Sports
Like all previous generations of EPO, the drug has made its appearance as a doping agent in endurance sport. It was rumoured to be blocked from the kidneys due to its size and therefore undetectable by urine-based doping controls. However, professional cyclist Riccardo Ricco returned a positive A-sample test for Mircera in the 2008 Tour de France and was ejected from the race by his team and arrested by French police. In September 2008, it was reported that samples of around 30 tour riders would be re-tested using a new, more effective test for CERA and in October 2008, two-time stage winner Stefan Schumacher, third overall and polka-dot jersey winner Bernhard Kohl, and Leonardo Piepoli tested positive for CERA.
Six weeks after the end of the 2008 Olympic Games, the IOC announced they would be retesting all doping samples from the 2008 Beijing Olympics for CERA. The IOC announced in April 2009 that cyclist Davide Rebellin had tested positive for CERA use.
In July 2009, the Union Cycliste Internationale announced that Danilo Di Luca, who had finished second in the 2009 Giro d'Italia had samples from two stages test positive.
In the August 2009 issue of the scientific journal Comparative Exercise Physiology, Don Catlin, M.D. and colleagues at the Los Angeles-based NGO Anti-Doping Research (ADR) reported that they developed an equine test for CERA.
In November 2009, the Olympic 1500 m champion Rashid Ramzi was stripped of his title by the IOC after testing positive for CERA.
In July 2010 athlete Erik Tysse gave a positive CERA sample and was later banned for 2 years by the IAAF.
Read more about this topic: Continuous Erythropoietin Receptor Activator
Famous quotes containing the words illegal and/or sports:
“Consider the vice president, George Bush, a man so bedeviled by bladder problems that he managed, for the last eight years, to be in the men’s room whenever an important illegal decision was made.”
—Barbara Ehrenreich (b. 1941)
“Sweet smiling village, loveliest of the lawn,
Thy sports are fled and all thy charms withdrawn;
Amidst thy bowers the tyrant’s hand is seen,
And desolation saddens all thy green;
One only master grasps the whole domain,
And half a tillage stints thy smiling plain;”
—Oliver Goldsmith (1730?–1774)