Golf Surpasses More Athletic Pastimes In Positive Test Results
As Wednesday kicks off the one-year countdown to the Rio Olympic Games, it is interesting that in all of the stories on WADA's findings into sports with issues, that golf registered the third highest score for the percentage of positive drug tests. 
Johnny Waterson of the Irish Times explains.
An AAF identifies the presence of a prohibited substance or its metabolites or markers in any given sample.
The 2015 figures, which collates all of the samples analysed and reported by accredited Wada laboratories throughout the world in 2014, shows that golf scored a 1.6 per cent rate of positive drugs tests compared to 1.0 per cent for both athletics and cycling and 0.8 per cent for rugby.
More embarrassing for the sport is that golf came in with the third highest score for the percentage of positive tests.
It was worse than all of the other 21 listed sports except for equestrian sport and weightlifting.
There was good news though, the sample size was small and anabolic steroids were not an issue.
Of those 144 were positive which gave the 0.5 per cent positive reading. Athletics provided 25,830 samples and cycling 22,471 samples and both came out with the same reading of 1.0 per cent positive.
In athletics, cycling, soccer and rugby the most abused banned substances were anabolic agents, while in golf the samples returned no blood or urine that tested positive for those agents.
The drugs of choice for golfers are diuretics and other masking agents as well as Glucocortico-steroids.
Tuesday, August 4, 2015 at 10:33 PM
Reader Comments (38)
Drug testing is not about catching cheats and making sports clean, were that possible, about which I have my doubts, it is about keeping sponsors and spectators comfortable with what they are watching so as to keep the money coming in.
For comparison...
Elite road cycling:
5,256 in-competition urine samples, 67 positives (adverse analytical findings).
3,004 out-of-competition urine samples for 6 positives.
302 in-competition blood samples, 1 positive.
405 out-of-competition samples, no positives.
Golf:
391 in-competition urine samples, 8 positives.
116 out-of-competition urine samples, no positives but 3 atypicals.
Again, no blood testing.
That's just toxicology. No bio-passport in golf and you couldn't have one on the basis of those numbers. Again, who were these players? If the majority aren't Senior Tour pros going down for Deer Antler Spray then someone got some explaining to do.
The Czech Golf Federation here basically runs the testing here. A young pro was suspended a few seasons back because he ran away from the testers when he saw them set up. It was the national indoor simulator tournament to boot..lol. This is what Olympic golf has brought us. Pee collectors chasing down a video based tournament.
Also, I can envision a senior golfer taking a diuretic for hypertension, not masking, and I can see any golfer taking prednisone (glucocorticoid) or getting cortisone injected into an inflamed hip or shoulder, then testing "positive."
I am not convinced this report means very much without more clarification.
All that said, there's a reason the list is hyper-inclusion. Sports with really bad compliance histories (cycling, weightlifting, track), the athletes are expert at manipulating their intake of PEDs or performing other actions like blood-doping that take them right to, but not over, the legal line.
And all this really shows is that blood testing is pretty useless, lots of money spent for no real return.
The WADA list is ridiculous, lots of banned substances that are totally legal, and lots of banned substances that have never been scientifically shown to have a performance enhancing effect. And cortisone which is a steroid, is completely legal according to WADA.
Sure, you can talk about hypertension and asthma drugs among seniors, but what about when the look of a woman would prompt an Olympic coach to ask for a gene test. In fact, you never hear about women in golf being tested for drugs, and in the Olympics, women are among the most suspect for abuse in several sports. We had a discussion about a couple of these golfers yesterday in another thread here, and the usual suspects came out to say what wonderful human beings the golfers in question were to all who knew them... And yet, when their appearance suddenly changes and performance immediately falls off, it's still off limits to even ask the question...
It all seems very political, and in the end, it DOES seem to be the recreational user like DJ or the occasional silly season "deer antler" user like Vijay who gets the hammer treatment by both the "official" and media scrutiny.
As to the former, I stand by what I said
So Press Agent:
Do you think increased clubhead speed can provide an advantage - all else being equal ?
Do you think the ability to practice longer and more strenously, with quicker bounce back from muscle fatigue might give an advantage - again all else being equal?
Do you think the ability to heal more quickly from nagging injuries might give one an advantage ?
How about the ability to stay hyper focused on the task at hand, without losing concentration. Do you think that might help a round of competitive golf ?
The all do, and all provide an advantage.
Maybe HGH would allow longer practice sessions with faster bounce back, but it's a maybe. VJ spent every waking moment practicing and working ... did it help? i don't know. nobody does.
again hgh - maybe if true it's an advantage to come back from injury quicker.
so what gives hyper focus and no concentration loss but has no side effects like nervous energy that would be detrimental?
Whole lot of maybes. Increased muscle mass has proven to be no benefit for golf - and maybe even detrimental... so whatever.
(& increasing fast twitch muscle would lead to faster club head speed, maybe. And that would maybe be anabolic steroids. But no drug helps hand eye coordination)
And with regard to focus issues, they can take adderal, Ritalin and so on.
For instance HGH vs Advil vs Cortisone. The latter two are legal, and have been proven to help recovery and you ability to work out longer, and cortisone is a steroid. HGH has been proven to do nothing, with the only available evidence suggesting it might help people who are injured to recover. HGH is legal for the general population. And yet, HGH is considered an illegal PED.
And you didn't answer my question
So Press Agent:
"Do you think increased clubhead speed can provide an advantage - all else being equal ?"
It's never that simple.
"Do you think the ability to practice longer and more strenously, with quicker bounce back from muscle fatigue might give an advantage - again all else being equal?"
Seems to be a recipe for over-training, prob a negative.
"Do you think the ability to heal more quickly from nagging injuries might give one an advantage?"
Getting healed up isn't an advantage, simply returns one to 100%.
"How about the ability to stay hyper focused on the task at hand, without losing concentration. Do you think that might help a round of competitive golf ?"
That's the beta blockers isn't it?
Remember when the PGA Tour tried to ban Vijay for spraying colored water into his mouth a few times per day? LOL..those were the days...
PA, I think you are right, it's the recreational stuff that's tripping them up...
Many tests have shown HGH can improve performance, the issue is the testers cannot usually test athletes because it's banned and secondly athletes typically use much more than prescription levels which is also an ethical problem for testers to replicate.
See here,
http://www.livescience.com/32601-does-human-growth-hormone-really-help-athletes.html
The issues here with dosages and athletes are common among these tests, how can you test people using larger doses when it's unethical to give that amount to them? But the smaller improvements seen in these tests are significant for professional athletes, 4% in some instances.
WADA is right to ban substances they suspect may improve performance before they have evidence that it does. Through expert analysis they can extrapolate expected outcomes. While not always correct, they avoid allowing a suspect drug only to later deem it illegal and bring into doubt the performance of those who were allowed to take it earlier. I like the pre-emotive banning scenario much more.
But that's just me.
"Getting healed up isn't an advantage, simply returns one to 100%."
It is when the guy next to you had to take 2 weeks off.
As far as overtraining being a problem, I'm not a trainer or anything, but it seems to me it is the type of training that creates the problem, not the quantity.
Just to make sure we are all on the same page, you know that "steroids" in sports only refers to anabolic steroids. Yes, "cortisone" (usually depo-medrol, actually) is a "steroid", but so is cholesterol. Your first post seemed to intimate that you know that, but your second one doesn't.
No it's not. "Advantages", or lack thereof, only factor when the ropes are up and the pencil is is in hand -- nobody has an "advantage" when they are prone in the La-Z-Boy back home. By your definition Advil should be banned. Lots of players have publicly stated that without Advil like medicines they just could not make it throught a tournament week... Where do you draw the line?
What did the Tour end up paying Vijay for their false accusations? That really was a funny situation....it was so patently obvious the Tour was down the river without a paddle no rational person could possibly believe the Tour would prevail in the case...and they didn't.
@tremendous: I am well aware of all the different types of steroids but a) for a large percentage of the public when they hear steroids it's a buzzword for PEDS, and they picture muscles upon muscles (which is inaccurate in the extreme) and b) WADA does not share your statement that for sports purposes steroids means anabolic, they ban many other types of steroids, including, as you can see from this report, cortico steroids.
@KG if that is your definition of proof, you also must believe all the studys put out by cigarette companies that cigarettes aren't harmful to your health. To recap a 4% (what that means isn't stated, and how was it calculated?) increase was found in terms of cycling, but not muscle or anything else, in the 25 men who only got HGH.
My post highlighted one test of many that support that HGH can improve performance. But it also highlighted the issues of the studies in using real world data. That cannot test professional athletes and they cannot test at the levels of intake athletes ingest.
Even Dr. Norman Fost who is a defender of steroids and other PED's does not contest the short term benefits.
the experts who state they do not believe HGH is a PED often concede that they lack real world data involving athletes and high dosages.Their tests show with the low dosage given non athletes that their is "little or no improvement". When asked to define "little" things get less clear. Even if it's a little, a .5% edge in a 100m race is very significant.