The sight was unreal when the Russian ski star Jelena Välbe presented his living in Trondheim’s port in an anchored race village in 1997.
A few square meters of cabin would not have been a place to stay for the Finnish top colleagues for the Finnish top colleagues, but in the race, all five of the women’s gold medals winner.
The undersigned was not there to marvel at Välbe’s accommodation, but to ask about the event that made the Russian become a five -time, not four -time world champion in Trondheim.
Faded with little voice
The five -mile race of the original winner, the Elben of Välben Ljubov Jegorova The doping sample had been found in the test laboratory forbidden, called Bromantan.
Jegorova had left the ship and the city with little voice.
In German, Välbe, who had fallen from rage, said he was ashamed of the fact that such a scam had slipped through the selection process.
Later, the Vimma of the Ski Queen, who was breeding as chairman of the Russian Ski Association, raised questions about this chemical morality in 1997, but the cold fact is that every doping sample given by Välben walked out of the laboratory throughout the laboratory.
When Jegorova himself was not willing to find the background of the incident in the public word, the later chairman of the organization was on the stage Gian-franco Punchwith the Lahti World Championships that have fallen four years away for Finns, the Norwegian Inggard Lereim and a Finnish anti -doping expert Tapio Videman.
Feather series activity
Each gentleman knew that Jegorova’s pimple was a feather series compared to how the doping rules were broken in the scenes of cross -country skiing without much influence.
The use of epo-hormone, which increases the hemoglobin content of the blood and through this significantly increases the oxygen capacity of the athlete, marked all the top endurance sports in the 1990s.
– At that time, the activity at that time would not be possible in any way without being caught. Testing, tests and whole test logic have been revolutionized from those days, says a medical expert at the Ethics Center of Finland, the Finnish Sports Ethics Center Pekka Rauhala.
No risk of being caught
The use of EPO was safe for the athlete’s risk of being caught, as the anti-doping system did not receive a scientifically ratified EPO test in the early 2000s.
For the first time in the use of EPO or its derivatives, skiers were not closed for the first time at the Salt Lake City Olympic Games in 2002 Johann Mühleggin, Olga Danilova and Larisa Lazutina The samples were positive.
A year later the Finn Kaisa Varis He received a two-year ban on the EPO-positive doping sample at the Val di Fiemme World Cup.
According to the most enlightened estimates, the most dirty time in cross-country skiing was on both sides of the mid-1990s, including the Trondheim World Championships in 1997.
The very high hemoglobin values of the athletes told the experts crystalline what it was about, but the problem could not be reached.
For example, the women’s national team coach at that time Kari-Pekka Kyrö Has talked about the activities of the era later quite openly.
In May 2008, he revealed to the Prosecutor General’s Office that he had seen his own eyes when blood was lowered in Trondheim in 1997.
Kyrö also told about the EPO note distributed to the Ski Association’s coaching leadership, which advised the team for that product.
The dramatic, but at the time, had to be bleeding at the time, as the International Ski Association FIS for the 1996-97 season had even invented an indirect way to curb the use of epic.
Before the race, the skiers were conditioned on the hemoglobin measurement, where the men’s upper limit was first 175 and the women’s 160. Crossing the border brought a five -day ban, but was not treated as a doping crime.
For example, if the athlete’s hemoglobin was too high the night before the competition, it could be set within limits, for example through moderate bleeding.
Liquefies to the picture
Instead of removal, blood values raised by EPO began to be dropped by various liquefies in the late 1990s, which became banned in the early 2000s.
Breaking this new rule that led to Finland From the team’s point of view, catastrophic consequences, ie six athletes at the Lahti World Championships in 2001, but at that time, the use of EPO could not be demonstrated except indirectly.
Those who have reached message silver in the 1997 World Championships and those who have been banned after the Lahti World Cup 2001 Jari Isomet and Harri Kirvesniemi They remembered that doping samples were then taken downstairs in the stadium building.
Isometsä does not remember that the testers had visited athletes, Kirvesniemi’s memory is different.
Test station in a football hall
Much has changed a lot in 28 years from the perspective of both testing and Granåsen’s ski area infrastructure.
The stadium building is still in place, but the test station is now in the giant, new football hall.
Sports asked for an interview opportunity practical from the representative of Antidoping Norge, who handles the race test, but the communications manager Kjell Arne Jörgensen and the test manager Geir Holden They announced that they did not want to comment publicly in the World Cup test.
So far the subscriber of the test, or FIS, is this season In the competitions, 153 samples from cross -country skiers. Last for the season The figure was 221.
Much more important today is an out -of -race training session testing, the interrogation system binding on top competitors, and a biological passport, which regularly collects blood samples for a hematological profile.
Significant deviations in the profile can even lead directly to doping offense, at least to intensive testing, to determine whether the deviation is due to forbidden bloodanipulation.
Where did I disappear doping?
Since the Lahti disaster, significant skiing events of the same caliber have been, for example, the following:
Dopingrazia in the Torino Olympic Games in 2006.
Protecting Russian skiers from the anti -doping system at the Sochi Olympic Games 2014.
Coordinated by German and Austria Police, the operation of five skiers who led to the operation of five skiers during the 2019 Seefeld World Championships.
However, over the past six years, it is observed that doping has virtually disappeared from skiing agenda.
This is the reasons for Sports by interviewing Pekka Rauhala, a doctorate in pharmacology and a doping expert.
Rauhala presents, among other things, Suek graphics in education materials (above as an illustration of this story), which is related to research in professional cycling about athletes’ blood description.
The most important EPON use indicator for testers is the explosion of young red blood cells, or reticulocytes.
To the picture in the middle of blood
-The graphics show that before the EPO test, the production of reticulocytes has been exceptionally high. Then, when the epotage was completed and could no longer be used, the number of new red cells even dropped dramatically, Rauhala opens.
The above is related to Italian anti -doping researchers, long -time professional cycling Mario Zorzolin and Francesca Rossin to the reports made by.
In particular, an operation of an Operation Suonen strike is remembered in which an Austrian Max pike Surprise in the midst of a forbidden additional blood, more familiarly a blood tank, a needle in the elbow.
When the EPO test came into the picture and began to develop rapidly, this old method, known in Finnish endurance sports, was excavated from the Kilitus.
As a special step forward to testing, Rauhala considers the biological passport and the blood profile it drawn.
– Testing does not get perfection, but the development of testing is responsible for the fact that very accurate traffic control cameras have come along the road a lot more to curb speeds.
– When significant blood removal is certainly revealed, manipulation levels must be kept very moderate, which also benefits lower than before.
As a cautious and accurate investigator of his words, Rauhala does not want to think whether athletes who have been forbidden in Trondheim are athletes who have been forbidden but survived through testing.
– I don’t take a stand, he laughs.
For the enormous development of testing, he digs an example:
– Nine athletes were caught in the London Olympic Games (2012). On the other hand, new, ex -post analyzes of samples (over 10 years) have been caught about ten times the number of athletes.
-Repeat analysis is quite a deterrent as tests and analytics are constantly evolving. Today, testing is from a completely different world than, for example, in the Trondheim World Cup in 1997.
One big challenge
One of the more challenging things for testing is the extra blood of the athlete’s own blood.
– So far, it cannot be demonstrated by a direct test, but if you take a significant amount of oxygen, or oxygen, it will immediately appear in the hematological profile of the biological passport.
– It has also been directly launched by competition, without the so -called direct positive test result.
Anti -doping activities are not the same in all species, but intensity also depends on how much the international umbrella organization is investing resources, that is, money.
According to Rauhala, FIS is a well -sustained organization.
– Testing is of high quality, international and year -round. FIS is actively communicating with national anti -doping agencies and Wada (world anti -doping office).
– It is credible that violation of doping rules in FIS species leads to caught.
The World Ski Championships will be heard and we will be seen live from EPN channels. See and follow all the news from the World Ski World Championships.