A positive anabolic steroid(Testosterone) was found in an out of competition doping control test of a Chinese athlete in recent months.
On October 6th, 2007, Ms.
Hongni
Wang waived her right to a hearing and accepted a 2-year suspension.
The editor of this site personally believes the ban should be more like 5 years. Otherwise all athletes can use steroids in their build-ups and get away with it. That is a build up even before their first ITU race. All trace of steroids disapear completely out of the athletes body after a certain time period, but they were still beneficial to get a starting spot.
It probably can't be controlled, so it makes a mockery of true sportmanship and tarnishes all those around the drug cheats.
Note: This banned Chinese athlete did not race in this Beijing event. In recent years the editor of this site has noted bans being handed out to female athletes with incresing regularity. It is very likely that corrupt athlete managers(and possibly the medics), are some of the cause for this, and thus more investigation is no doubt warranted. The suppliers and advocates of the banned drugs/techniques should also be reprimanded.
An image to show the gradient of what looks like a pretty easy climb, but it might be enough for some strong cyclists to make break aways.
This would be one of the few ways a team could work together to get an athlete on the podium. Two or three athletes from a team(eg. French men) could make a break on the bike and then two of these athletes could do all the work for the strongest runner of the group. The timing of such a breakaway would have to be well rehearsed and organised before race day and the athletes would also likely train together to work as a small cycle pack. From my limited cycling experience I would say it should be easy for a group of three to maintain and extend such a break over the relatively short cycling distance of 40kms.
However other athletes are unlikely to allow this, and some teams could even have a member who must join onto such breakaways at any cost(sacrifice). These 'sacrifice' athletes from outside a breakaway team could join just to disrupt the cohesion and have a slowing effect.
The other way to combat it would be for another countries team to work together(assuming they are all in the front cycle pack), and make a challenge.
It is good however that only the strongest countries can have three representatives I think otherwise this triathlon event could turn into a team event.
It would be useful to at least be aware of the above possibility. Chris Pilone did suggest to me that some teams(single country), could work together to get their countryman on top of the podium. I haven't seen/heard of it being a carried out previously but the talk of it has been around for many years now.
The true spirit of triathlon is as an individual sport in my view and it is good that there are still triathlon series running outside of ITU that are non-drafting.
As a spectator with a background in competing, non-drafting is one reason I see the ironman distance races as more enthralling to follow.
Hopefully ITU can incorporate some non-drafting races into the series as it just becomes a running race otherwise. This may prove to be difficult however with such large fields, unless wide roads are used.
