Williams sisters have prescription to the dopers favourite product

Brian Askvig

Перевод с датского языка.

Venus and Serena Williams have used the performance-enhancing cortisone, which has been used frequently in cycling for years.

Prednisolone. Methylprednisolone. Prednisone. Triamcinolone. Or simply just cortisone. Known by many as corticosteroids. And by countless athletes known as a performance enhancing drug, not least in cycling has a prominent place in dopers medicine cabinet.

The four products are among those that tennis stars Venus and Serena Williams over several years has used legitimately, as they have been granted exemption from anti-doping authorities to use them. What injury problems, the otherwise banned corticosteroids should help against is not clear.

The documents that the Russian hacker group Fancy Bear has sucked out of anti-doping database, ADAMS, indicating the diagnosis as 'confidential'. Cortisone, anti-inflammatory, which means that it effectively beats an inflammation down. It can be very useful for an athlete, for example, to get rid of an aching knee quickly, but cortisone has the side effect that it works performance enhancing.

This is the side effect that makes the substance the dopers favourite product.

- Cortisone is easily accessible and fast-acting. It works on the same day you take it. It exposes fatigue and promotes weight loss during prolonged use, says the former top bicycle rider Michael Rasmussen, who in his time used the drug, like probably the majority of the riders in the field.

- The drug can be purchased at almost every street corner, but it can not be used without a certificate (a waiver, ed.). In my time it was no big challenge to get such.

- There are plenty of examples of doctors extremely liberally shared out certificates. In the time I was driving, it was no problem getting one. We can probably all think of a place on the body where it hurts, says Michael Rasmussen.

Kortisons anti-inflammatory effect has over the years been used by doctors and athletes for real purposes. In those cases the substance should be injected exactly where inflammation prevails. If you want to use cortisone as doping, it is important to inject it into a muscle, so the effect utilized systemically, says Rasmussen.

- The certificate it must of course say that the drug should be injected in a joint, but in practice there's no one who can know how it enters the body, he says.

- It also works performance enhancing, if injected into a joint, but it's just not very pleasant.

Оригинал: 

http://ekstrabladet.dk/sport/williams-soestre-har-recept-paa-dopernes-yndlingsprodukt/6293282

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