When top athletes get out of breath while competing it is called “Exercise Induced Asthma”. Getting out of breath is surely a consequence of the athlete’s physical condition and it seems to me that EIA is an entirely invented medical condition. This allows them to get a “therapeutic use exemption” (TUE) and then use asthma medicine to improve their breathing. The TUE is effectively being used as a doping licence. Why inventing a “medical condition” and then using drugs is not considered cheating is beyond me.
tue-doping-licence
Daily Mail: Six more Team GB athletes have had their medical data leaked by a group of Russian hackers calling themselves the Fancy Bears. In the latest batch of data stolen from the World Anti-Doping Agency, the Fancy Bears list the therapeutic use exemptions (TUEs) granted to 41 athletes.
The British athletes were revealed as sprinter Harry Aikines-Aryeetey, sailors Sophie Ainsworth and Saskia Clark, rower Richard Chambers, cyclist Steve Cummings and gymnast Nile Wilson. As with the vast majority of the previous batches, all six of these athletes have been allowed to take medication for their asthma via inhalers.
The drugs in question have since been removed from WADA’s banned list and therefore no longer need any special permission for their use.
Among the international athletes in this batch – the largest so far – are Swiss cycling star Fabian Cancellara, American golfer Patrick Reed and US distance runner Galen Rupp.
Team GB now accounts for 23 of the 107 athletes named by the Fancy Bears, with top names such as Chris Froome and Sir Bradley Wiggins among those targeted.
Under pressure from out of breath athletes and their trainers, these asthma inhalers are no longer banned. WADA may as well remove all restrictions on all drugs.
I find WADA hypocritical. The acronym could just be for the “World Approved Drugs Association”.
Tags: Doping licence, TUE, WADA
The k2p blog 
September 24, 2016 at 12:44 pm
It is known that exercise induced anaphylaxis can occur in some individuals who push themselves to and beyond the limit that the body can take. So among top athletes etc. it is not surprising that they push themselves to the point of some reaction. This is one of the difficult areas in high level activity or sport. When is a drug not a drug and how do you deal with extremes of physical effort?
September 24, 2016 at 2:31 pm
True. When an athlete has reached his “natural” limit and then uses a drug to extend it then either all have access to the same drug or nobody does.
September 25, 2016 at 5:52 pm
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