Chinese doping scandal that has hung over these Paris Olympics as the events finished Sunday night.
China won the men’s 4x100-meter medley relay in 3 minutes, 27.46 seconds, with two of the four members on the team listed among 23 Chinese swimmers who tested positive ahead of the Tokyo Olympics three years ago. The swimmers were allowed to compete after a Chinese investigation ruled that they consumed food that had been contaminated.
…
The New York Times reported last week that two more Chinese swimmers had tested positive, including one 2024 Olympian, for a banned substance in 2022 but were cleared by Chinese officials to compete.
The World Anti-Doping Agency stood by its decision to clear the 23 swimmers who tested positive for a banned heart medication.
In general things that can calm your nerves in the run up to a very stressful sporting event are banned since forever.
I can tell you as someone who used to compete at a way lower level than these folks but still way beyond the average person that nerves have a huge impact on your body and therefore performance so it does make sense.
I’ll leave you to infer yourself how the human body responds to extreme stress and how that might affect performance. :)
That would make sense if they were looking for CBD, which is the chemical that causes the relaxing effect of weed, not THC which more or less just gives the “high” feeling. You can easily get CBD from hemp and WADA actually removed it from their ban list in 2019.
There are also plenty of allowed substances that can help you relax, even prescription-only. They would have to ban things like; alcohol (never gonna happen), dramamine (antiemetic), diphenhydramine (antihistamine), gabapentin (anticonvulsant, Rx-only), etc… These, while primarily used for other purposes, all are occasionally used for their sedating effects and to my knowledge are all allowed.
There was also the argument that while yes, it does help with relaxing, it will actually decrease performance on the whole.
I actually think all the stuff you listed could give an unfair advantage depending on the sport.
When I was a kid alcohol was a huge aspect of professional snooker but it got banned. Like they would be having pints while waiting to take their shot. I take diphenhydramine to help me sleep occasionally and I could see that giving a very slight advantage depending on the sport too.
My own sport relied on reflexes being on point so I’m no expert on relaxants. It’s definitely a very tricky business.
Lol, when I used to go out to bars and play billiards before covid, there was a point between 1.5 and 3 beers where I couldn’t miss a shot