Athletics: Warning over supplements from dodgy sources

LAUSANNE, Switzerland - Athletes who buy supplements and vitamins from unchecked sources are increasingly putting themselves at risk of inadvertent doping, experts have warned.

Some supplement manufacturers were putting false information on labels and traces of steroids had been found even in vitamin C tablets bought over the counter, an international symposium heard.

"We are finding new steroids every week and ... we think it is clear that the situation has got worse," Hans Geyer of the Cologne-based German Sport University told the three-day symposium organised by the International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF).

"Since 2003 we have also detected products intentionally faked with high amounts of classic anabolic steroids including metandienone, stanozol, boldenone and oxandrolone, sourced mainly from Chinese pharmaceutical companies which sell bulk material of anabolic steroids," Geyer said.

The number of new designer steroids being sold had rapidly increased since an international study in 2001 showed that 14.8 per cent of non-hormonal nutritional supplements contained anabolic-androgenic steroids which were not declared on the label, Geyer said.

Christiane Ayotte, head of the World Anti Doping Agency (WADA) accredited laboratory in Montreal, told delegates that certain supplement manufacturers were "playing cat-and-mouse with regulators and deliberately putting false information on their labels in an attempt to fool agencies".

The speakers said they were regularly ordering supplements from suspect websites in order to analyse potentially new substances.

Geyer said his team had found traces of metandienone and stanozol in vitamin C, multivitamin and magnesium tablets bought from German pharmacies.

"We realise that nutritional supplements are necessary in many sports. When you look at the Tour de France for example, it's clear that nutrition has to be taken in while cycling -- and you can't eat a Wiener Schnitzel on the bike.

"It puts athletes in a very difficult situation but all I can recommend is that they only use supplements from the mainstream pharmaceutical industry, or further minimise the risk by consulting some of the databases offered in countries such as Germany, the Netherlands or Canada where companies have undergone quality controls to guarantee that their products are steroid-free."

Geyer said athletes had to take full responsibility for their nutritional intake.

"It only takes a tiny amount of a banned substance to come into contact with a legal substance and the athlete taking it would test positive," he said.

"They would not gain any performance-enhancing boost from such a tiny amount but the rules are clear and the result would be a minimum two-year ban from the sport."

Professional tennis was recently rocked by a series of positive doping tests which were eventually attributed to contaminated supplements which had previously been sanctioned by the men's tennis body, the ATP.

Following that scandal, the ATP decided to make available specific nutritional supplements that had been tested by a WADA-accredited laboratory.

- REUTERS