By DPA
Hamburg : Sports is one big lie and taking place in a system of hypocrisy, German doping expert Fritz Soergel says.
Soergel, who heads a biomedical and pharmaceutical research institute in Nuremberg, told DPA that new drugs were being used and that doping controllers were lagging behind the latest developments.
He predicts that the market will be flooded for the Beijing Olympics next year and believes in a difficult future for sports.
“We must live with this system of hypocrisy. Sports is one big lie.
“Athletes are doping themselves with new drugs and they have no idea what after-effects such drugs will have. That is the future,” he said.
Soergel voiced his concern that new substances such as so-called “intelligent” versions of the blood booster erythropoietine (Epo) signal a new trend. He speaks of biosimilars and mentioned the substance dynepo.
“When new intelligent Epos arrive, which simulate the effect of Epo and cannot be traced, then the race against doping will be lost for a long time.”
Soergel believes that around 100 small companies and laboratories are capable of creating doping substances within four weeks. Combine this with determined people like Victor Conte from the infamous Balco Lab, then there is a “horror scenario”, according to Soergel.
Other new substances include IGF-1 (Insulin-like Growth Factor-1), which is produced from human growth hormones, which like many others is needed by patients but also has a doping capacity.
On top of this, the legal haemoglobin and hematocrit values are too high and “practically invite (athletes) to blood doping”.
Soergel said that all parties involved were demonstrating an intense fight against doping but hopes of a doping-free sport were simply utopian.
“It is rather a question on which technical level athletes compete with doping labs and how evenly balanced the armoury is,” he said.
Soergel added said that sponsors and the media have a key role in the fight against doping, while the German state’s anti-doping law should have been stricter and many sports federations simply hoped for the best.
“You close your eyes, hope that nothing happens and you are not woken up out of this dream,” he said.