Have we come to this? Masters athletes handed two-year doping bans because they sought to control hypertension or lose a little weight? That’s the possibility that arises with the revelation of the banned substances within the systems of two Italian masters. Yesterday, World Masters Athletics posted a series of WMA Council reports in advance of the world championships in Puerto Rico. New details have finally come to light about recent “drug positives’ in masters track.

I reported earlier about Tania Ciuciula, Annunziata Martone, Corrado Minervini and Luigi Venturelli being punished by the IAAF and WMA for doping violations. But until yesterday, specific transgressions had not been made public. Now we know about at least two of them.
Ciuciula had Phendimetrazine.
Venturelli had Hydrochlorothiazide.
Phendimetrazine is used as a hunger suppressant. Hydrochlorothiazide is a diuretic used to fight hypertension.
This is speculation, of course. But the odds of an over-50 athlete using these drugs to gain an “edge” seem slim compared with the notion that the athletes simply have a health or diet condition that needed treatment.
But WMA also seems in the dark on the exact nature of these violations — and whether the athletes or their national federations found the IAAF bans.
In his report to the WMA General Assembly, WMA Secretary Monty Hacker of South Africa writes: “I must also draw attention to the provisions of Section 4(3)(o) of the Constitution which requires the Secretary of any affiliate which has suspended an athlete to notify me of the terms of any such suspension to enable me to notify all affiliates thereof. To date I have not received any such notifications from a single affiliate. This becomes all the more disturbing when considering the details of the undermentioned doping suspensions concerning veteran athletes, as recently supplied to me by the IAAF Anti-Doping Office.”
He then listed 17 athletes over age 35 who the IAAF had sanctioned in the past four years, including the well-publicized case of American Kathy Jager and the case of Czech javelin thrower Frantisek Drab, which I discussed more than two years ago. Most of the athletes were in the elite ranks, including Linford Christie, Kory Tarpenning and Dieter Baumann (the German distance runner who claimed his toothpaste had been spiked).
For masters track, though, doping control is a joke. Rarely are masters tested, and when they are it’s only as a scare tactic. WMA boasts of testing at its world championships but doesn’t let on that only a few dozen of the 5,000 to 6,000 entrants ever are asked to pee in a bottle. And while Italy seems to take its doping controls seriously, the United States and many other track powers have never tested their masters competitors.
Still, if masters were tested in and out of competition as world-class athletes are, the possibility exists that the IAAF and WMA would end up banning more middle-agers and grayhairs for following doctor’s orders than for seeking to gain a competitive advantage through chemistry.
And with WMA and all of the masters movement in a perpetual cash crunch, the high cost of testing and adjudicating doping cases makes such a program senseless and counterproductive.
Instead of spending $1,000 on drug tests (as the WMA treasurer’s balance sheet suggests), WMA should use that money to help educate masters about the harm of certain drugs.
An ironic postscript: When Merlene Ottey found herself accused of doping, her Jamaican federation fought for her. She eventually was cleared of all charges.
Who helped clear Ottey’s slate? The WMA’s Monty Hacker.