Around the World
Controversial Swedish Documentary Arouses Reaction
27 February 2013 года
Controversial Swedish Documentary Arouses Reaction

The material which served as the basis for making the film was provided by the famous Finnish coach Kari-Pekka Kyrö: expert was disqualified for life term for the distribution of performance-enhancing drugs in 2001, when several skiers of the Finnish ski team at the home World Cup in Lahti were found to be using banned Hemohes, which, as supposed, was used to reduce the level of hemoglobin and to conceal the use of other performance-enhancing drug - erythropoietin (EPO).

Head of anti-doping program of the International Ski Federation (FIS) Rasmus Damsgaard has accessed to this information during the World Cup in Val di Fiemme, and believes that these measurements are not reliable. "The filmmakers analyzed data using a device that is hardly precise. They were told that this was a laboratory equipment, but it is not. And they did not know about it," - said Damsgaard.

According to VG Nett, it is a blood scanner, which is not used in an anti-doping research. At the same time, Rasmus Damsgaard admitted that the film has a noteworthy facts. "The film devoted a great deal of time to athletes, whose performance is in the border zone between normal and elevated. However, for some skiers they achieved a number of results: which are high even using inaccurate equipment, that means that anti-doping services should pay attention to them," - emphasized Damsgaard.

At the same time, the expert noted that the film would not surprise people working in the anti-doping programs. "Everyone knows what happened in the 90s" - summed Damsgaard.

The release date of the film became known a few days ago. Then the Swedish professor Bengt Saltin said that he was sure that it is impossible to lead the racing 10-15 years without the help of drugs. This declaration followed by an legendary Norwegian skier Bjorn Daly’s (on photo) outcry who won nine gold medals at the world champion in 90s.

Source: http://www.tnp.no



Back to the list