Quote: Highlander "Every sport is different and substances can be treated differently due to "in competition" or "out of competition".
And then - there is the Therapeutic Exemption which has to be signed off by your national affiliation - ie insulin/diabetics and salbutamol/asthmatics. As long as they know about it in advance and have accepted it is medically neccessary you are ok.
Btw - this is being reported as the first global prosecution of an athlete for hGH - new test supposedly. The statements from the doping agencies are very strong - another substance which can now be effectively detected - athletes beware!'"
Yep I saw this on SSN. There was a spokeman from UKDA giving big raps to the RFL for their drugs policy and especially for introducing this blood test into out of competition testing.
I've seen a few people involved in the game on TV over the past week asking for it to be extended to more tests out of competition but the blood test is really expensive. Sinfield was asking for it to be extended on the Super league show I bet as a clean athlete it's really annoying because you're probably aware (maybe not of the identities of those involved) of this going on all around you. Newton is probably the tip of the iceburg. I was under the impression (after watching a documentary on Inside Sport) that HGH only shows up for 24 hours on a urine test but according to UKDA is actually a matter of days rather than hours. If I'm just a casual observer who's picked up half truths from watching a couple of sports programs on the box I bet there is loads of misinformation doing the rounds in the gyms where players do a bit of extra training. If it means losing a Terry Newton to the sport for the sake of not losing 100's of young kids by highlighting that you can't get away with taking HGH and highlighting the stringent testing imposed by the sports governing body it's not necessarily a bad thing. Newton is old enough and seen enough people get bans to know different. But imagine a sixteen year old kid desperate for a career in the sport talking to someone older who they look up to in the gym about getting that extra bit of muscle mass.
Terry could do a lot for the sport that's given him a good career by coming clean and letting the RFL and UKDA know who is involved, where he got it, how he took it, what's going on and what's being said by the players in the game.
Of course this all begs the question why does Terry Newton need growth hormone? Judging by his days at Bradford bulking up wasn't his highest priority.
