gymnastic and doping

I am very intrigued to hear your opinion.

is a reality or is it just fiction? exists or does not exist in gymnastics?

you hear of mass emuscoalr exaggerated, too much stress in the joints.

two years of training in the gym I saw my body change completely, my right arm is 44 cm. but I never took anything.

Some of my friends on the Italian national team often makedoping checks and in any case after 10-15 years of training ' am not surprised by the physical form of elite athletes.

What do you think about that?

I think in many 3rd world countries, I doubt gymnasts are doing it on their own unless they have a financial base. With countries with a big enough budget to support it and a history of doing so, maybe.

Thing is their really isn't that much of a financial incentive to do it. FIG has started offering some nice paydays for some of it's meets but then it couldn't come up with the cash to pay them out.

annx said:

I don't think it's only in "3rd world countries" I firmly believe US gymnasts had exposure to "supplements" all along.

Correct me if Im wrong, but I dont think he meant it is only done in the third world, but the other way around. I do think this question would be almost impossible to solve just based off of our knowledge, as the only COMPLETELY guaranteed way of finding the answer is to be a gymnast as a child at a gym that pumps out olympians and see if youre in olympic shape by your late teens to twenties

The only way you are doing it in a 3rd world country is if you happen to be rich or your country/province, etc is handing them out.

I hear in the US, if you can afford protein powder you can afford steroids. However, the custom designed anabolic compounds used to avoid detection and are "designer-made" need some significant fiscal backing. Your everyday joe in many other countries might not be able to afford them. Especially when you consider supplements are way less expensive in the US than they are in other countries. Probably the same thing goes with anabolics.

Compared to the US anabolics are cheap and easy to obtain, especially in former Soviet bloc countries, India, and Asia

I see very little benefit that traditional anabolics would provide a Olympic caliber gymnast. I could see benefits from therapeutic use of growth hormone to aid in the development and maintenance of joint and connrctive tissue quality, but other, no scheduled drugs like pentosan poly sulfate would work perhaps as well. Those might be useful in healing injuries. I was really intrigued by Orozco's comeback from an Achilles tear. In those cases I would not consider it a cheat.

It seems to me extra muscle on a gymnast is unlikely to be a competitive advantage. I have heard that female gymnasts are discouraged from taking birth control as it has detrimental effects on the competitive body and maintaining optimal weight and strength

Doping? It is even worse - they are ice bucketing :shock:

http://instagram.com/p/N0uKmNqiWQ/

No, women are discouraged from having periods. If it's possible, lol.

What I meant was that protein powders are much more expensive in other countries than the US. Maybe China or Australia may be comparable. It's super expensive in Japan I hear.

While steroids themselves might be cheaper in the 3rd world countries, it's a matter of affording them. If you are an athlete, where do you get your income? Coaching like Gregor? Yeah, that makes jack diddly squat. You have some income if you are an athlete and win competitions in the state run athletic programs like China or Romania of old. Still, probably not enough if they are saving it or sending some back home.

I do know that if you go to Ukraine you can get steroids and medicines pretty cheaply. I have a contact, lol. I nearly thought about asking him for something for a sinus infection that would not go away last year. You could go to Mexico, but you might not come back. I doubt it's cheaper in Canada than the US.

I guess I need to do some research on how expensive steroids are here in the US to compare. Bah.

Another board I frequent pretty much discourages this topic so ce la vie.