The Olympics are finally here! One of the more controversial issues that arose from the 2012 Olympics concerned Ye Shiwen, a 16 year old Chinese swimmer. Shiwen managed to take home the gold medal in the 400m individual medley by shaving 5 seconds off her personal best time and beating the previous world record by over 1 second! Not only that, but Shiwen swam her final 50m faster than the men’s 400m gold medalist!! As if this wasn’t enough, she also took the gold medal in the 200m individual medley and set an Olympic record!!! As in many cases of excellence, instead of being congratulated, she was now being questioned for cheating. Shiwen was accused of doping. These allegations lead to a drug test shortly after. The results came back that Shiwen was clean. End of story. Is it really though?

Upon further research, there are many different types of performance enhancing drugs. Some of these drugs stay in your system for months to years while others can only be traced in your system for a week. One of the longer lasting performance enhancing drugs called nandrolone decanoate can be detectable in your system for 18 months. One of the shorter lasting performance enhancing drugs called testosterone undecanoate is only detectable in your system for about a week. If timed correctly, these drugs can be practically untraceable in the body. The important thing to know about performance enhancing drugs is their ability to put on a larger amount of muscle mass than your body can “naturally” obtain. When the person stops using the drugs, the muscle doesn’t instantly go away. In fact, it takes quite some time for muscle to break down, and if on a proper diet, the body can hold on to most of the new muscle. A study by a man named Anders Ericsson in the Department of Integrative Medical Biology at Sweden’s Umea University confirmed that performance enhancing drugs have permanent muscle enhancing effects. Just for argument sake, would it be fair to say that there is a chance that Shiwen may have taken a performance enhancing drug early enough in her training where the drug had time to leave her system and become almost untraceable? If so, does this mean that during her time of doping Shiwen could have developed more muscle mass and strength than could be naturally obtained in that period of time? Lastly, is it possible that the muscle and strength which she may have developed in this period of time could have been effectively maintained up to the Olympics giving her an edge on the competition?

Now, I’m not saying that Shiwen is doping or not, but there is plenty of reasoning that caused her to get tested in the first place. If the World Anti-Doping Agency says she is drug-free, than this is what we must accept. Is it possible that you can pass a drug test but still have taken drugs in the past? The answer is YES!! Let’s just hope this isn’t the case here. It would be nice to believe that in the world of sports where performance enhancing drug use has become commonplace, the Olympics is one of the exceptions. Congratulations Ye Shiwen on your wins and new world record! Stay clean!!

-Tom

Sources:
Baker, Millard. “Anabolic Steroids Result in Permanent Muscle Gains.” Meso Rx, 4 April 2008
“How long do steroids stay detectable in your system?” SteroidPortal.com