The Rugby World Cup starts on Friday, with the sport facing new doping doubts and even World Rugby president Bernard Lapasset said banned substances are the biggest danger facing rugby.
World Rugby this month confirmed a two-year drug ban against former South African hooker Chiliboy Ralepelle, while revelations that French prosecutors are investigating pharmacists in Toulon, after being alerted by the nation’s anti-doping agency, emerged in the week that France left for their World Cup base in England.
The issue has been addressed in the tournament’s host nation.
World Cup blood and urine tests are to be carried out by UK Anti-Doping (UKAD). It has refused to say how many tests are to be carried out, but it knows rugby well.
Of the 47 people on the UKAD banned list, 16 are from rugby union and another 12 from rugby league.
Many of those banned in Britain and other rugby powers are still young. In New Zealand, Finn Hart-Strawbridge, 19, a former young New Zealand Barbarian, was banned for two years after admitting buying a banned substance on the Internet.
His lawyer said Hart-Strawbridge bought the human growth hormone precursor GHRP-6 as a “joke.”
However, many coaches and experts say there is intense pressure on young players to bulk up in a sport that often relies on brute force to get the tactical advantage that is the beauty of rugby.
Lapasset has called doping “the biggest danger for the integrity of the sport.”
“Even if we are convinced that there is no culture of systematic doping in rugby, you have to be intransigent, and World Rugby acts with a principle of zero tolerance,” he added.
Tests during the World Cup are to be examined at Kings College in London and then held for eight years for possible new tests. Rugby has introduced biological passports that have helped catch more cheats in other sports by keeping records over several years for comparison.
Last year, more than 2,000 tests were carried out around the world and four players were banned.
Coming into the World Cup, France’s squad were tested three times by the nation’s ALDA agency.
Ten players were awoken at 7am three days before France played England in a warm-up match last month.
Later came the media reports that a Toulon pharmacist might have provided steroids to players at the southern city’s three time European champions.
Toulon president Mourad Boudjellal has angrily condemned the media claims and said it was a social security fraud with no link to the club.
Doping has been a sensitive topic in France since former international Laurent Benezech alleged that banned substances were widespread in the national team in the 1980s. Benezech claimed he was given a steroid at the 1995 World Cup. He was sued for defamation by the players union, but a French court cleared the former prop.
“We know we are in a high risk sport,” said Christian Bagate, who heads the French Rugby Federation’s anti-doping effort. “The public has the right to doubt that our players are clean, and unfortunately you can find supplements that have doping products on sale in supermarket.”
However, Bagate said that contradictory World Anti-Doping Agency rules do not help, adding that cases are individuals rather than organized on a team level.
UKAD chief executive Nicole Sapstead agreed, but has highlighted the need for tests ahead of major tournaments like the World Cup.
“The last thing any huge tournament like this wants is a doping scandal,” she said.
Revelations of positive doping tests for nearly two dozen Chinese swimmers that went unpunished sparked an intense flurry of accusations and legal threats between the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) and the head of the US drug-fighting organization, who has long been one of WADA’s fiercest critics. WADA on Saturday said it was turning to legal counsel to address a statement released by US Anti-Doping Agency (USADA) CEO Travis Tygart, who said WADA and anti-doping authorities in China swept positive tests “under the carpet by failing to fairly and evenly follow the global rules that apply to everyone else in the world.” The
Taiwanese judoka Yang Yung-wei on Saturday won silver in the men’s under-60kg category at the Asian Judo Championships in Hong Kong. Nicknamed the “judo heartthrob” in Taiwan, the Olympic silver-medalist missed out on his first Asian Championships gold when he lost to Japanese judoka Taiki Nakamura in the finals. Yang defeated three opponents on Saturday to reach the final after receiving a bye through the round of 32. He first topped Laotian Soukphaxay Sithisane in the round of 16 with two seoi nage (over-the-shoulder throws), then ousted Indian Vijay Kumar Yadav in the quarter-finals with his signature ude hishigi sankaku gatame (triangular armlock). He
RALLY: It was only the second time the Taiwanese has partnered with Kudermetova, and the match seemed tight until they won seven points in a row to take the last set 10-2 Taiwan’s Chan Hao-ching and Russia’s Veronika Kudermetova on Sunday won the Porsche Tennis Grand Prix women’s doubles final in Stuttgart, Germany. The pair defeated Norway’s Ulrikke Eikeri and Estonia’s Ingrid Neel 4-6, 6-3, 10-2 in a tightly contested match at the WTA 500 tournament. Chan and Kudermetova fell 4-6 in the first set after having their serve broken three times, although they played increasingly well. They fought back in the second set and managed to break their opponents’ serve in the eighth game to triumph 6-3. In the tiebreaker, Chan and Kudermetova took a 3-0 lead before their opponents clawed back two points, but
Taiwanese gymnast Lee Chih-kai failed to secure an Olympic berth in the pommel horse following a second-place finish at the last qualifier in Doha on Friday, a performance that Lee and his coach called “unconvincing.” The Tokyo Olympics silver medalist finished runner-up in the final after scoring 6.6 for degree of difficulty and 8.800 for execution for a combined score of 15.400. That was just 0.100 short of Jordan’s Ahmad Abu Al Soud, who had qualified for the event in Paris before the Apparatus World Cup series in Qatar’s capital. After missing the final rounds in the first two of four qualifier