SPORT SCAN – Following the revelations of Amaury Leveaux regarding the consumption of drugs in the world of swimming, Dr. Jean-Pierre de Mondenard, specializing in doping issues, provides decryption .
By Antoine Raguin
The recent statements of Amaury Leveaux who leaked her biography, Sex, drugs and swimming which will be released at the end of April, made a great noise. It evokes the most attractive or less pronounced swimmers from the France team for cocaine. For Le Figaro , Jean Pierre de Mondenard, sports physician and specialist in the doping issue, discusses the history and the effects of this substance among top athletes.
• A substance known and used for a long time
“In sport, it’s an old product that has traversed the ages and is registered since 1971 in the list of banned substances International Olympic Committee (IOC). Cocaine stimulates the central nervous system. In the fifteenth century, cocaine is already known as a component of physical performance. Mexico and South America, there was a unit of measure that was the distance traveled by the chewed a coca leaf. A chewing coca leaves, they were able to travel several kilometers and it was measured. So we knew even then that cocaine allowed to do long-term effort. “
” In rugby, we know that players take cocaine the week to perform better during weight training sessions and to train more intensely “
• Stimulating competing effects
” This is a perfectly effective product in competition. Cocaine used to not be hungry, not tired, to fight against the difficulty of the effort. It gives the athlete the feeling of being invincible, being Superman, to have the feeling that nothing can resist him. And that limit fatigue. Athletes are much more resistant in cocaine. Moreover, in the 1970s, the American basketball, a statistic showed that 40% were using cocaine. “
• A rapidly evacuated substance
“By taking during competitions, it is risky because it is easily identifiable. However, there is a subtlety of regulation that athletes are familiar. It is prohibited in competition. If they are in training, they are not wrong. It is therefore a very effective doping product because it brings a force effect in training. In rugby, we know that players use cocaine the week to perform better during weight training sessions and to train more intensely. Game day, they are negative because they arrested 48 or 72 hours before the time it takes for it to no longer visible in the blood. But the workload generated training allows them to be more competitive on the time in the game. For me, this is an aberration not prohibit and competition. It would ban all the time. “
• What consequences on the human body?
” Like any stimulant, the important c is the dose. Beyond a certain point, there has adverse effects. The athlete is super excited so his movements are exaggerated, inaccurate, insufficient. Precision of movement is deteriorating. “
• Earlier in the sports world
For over 30 years, Jean-Pierre de Mondenard lists all cases of doping, which were unveiled in the world of sport. Some of these cases involve cocaine.
-In 1978, the American swimmer Mark Foreman is private competition for two years for taking cocaine.
-In 1991 Diego Maradona was arrested by Italian police after testing positive for cocaine. It is suspended fifteen months and did not play again for his club in Naples.
-In 1999, the world record holder in the high jump Javier Sotomayor was banned for two years following an inspection. His suspension was halved by the President of the International Athletics Federation “for his services to the cause of his sport.”
-In 2004, the Romanian Adrian Mutu is suspended for taking cocaine. In 2008, he was sentenced by FIFA to pay his then club, Chelsea, the sum of 17,2M € in compensation.
-In 2009, on the sidelines of Miami tennis tournament, Richard Gasquet gets caught by the patrol. Provisionally suspended, it is cleared by the international federation. In his defense, he evokes a kiss a girl at a party responsible for its control. It has never been possible to prove the truth of his words.
-In 2013, Mickaël Whitehead, Canadian player of wheelchair rugby is suspended twelve months after testing positive.
-In 2014, Darn Benitez, a Spanish footballer of Granada tested positive for the same substance. Exclusion during a game against Betis Seville too brutal tackle alerted controllers.
-End March 2015, the French racing driver Franck Montagny was banned for two years after testing positive for a derivative of cocaine during a Formula I race in Malaysia in November.
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