P144
CN
III EMPIRE OF DIRT
BY STEVE COX
B
roc Tickle was at Glen
Helen this weekend,
but he wasn't racing. He
wasn't even wearing any team
gear. Because right now he
has no team, as Red Bull KTM
ended his contract following
Tickle's failure of a WADA (World
Anti Doping Agency) urinalysis. I
covered this in an earlier column
titled "Ban Wada."
Seeing Tickle at Glen Helen
refreshed my anger at this
injustice. The dude should be
racing, but right now he's facing
a four-year suspension because
he unknowingly took a banned
substance that is available very
cheap at any GNC in the U.S.
This is what WADA considers
"doping."
There are tons of philosophi-
cal problems here. For ex-
ample, WADA claims they want
to prevent athletes from taking
"performance-enhancing drugs"
(PEDs), yet they allow athletes to
take NSAIDs (Non Steroidal Anti-
Inflammatory Drugs) like Tylenol
(acetaminophen), Advil (ibupro-
fen), or Aleve (naproxen). Those
are definitely performance-en-
hancing drugs for anybody who
has soreness or pain of almost
any kind.
It's these sorts of inconsisten-
cies that cause a thinking person
to question the point of WADA in
the first place. But as I said in my
last column on the subject, the
point of WADA is to make money.
It's a business, and it exists to
punish athletes for money.
Now, it's time to take this
analysis a step further:
After I wrote my last column on
this subject, I started searching
the web for scholarly analysis of
WADA, and I found it here.
It's entitled: Ideology, Doping
and the Spirit of Sport, and it's
written by Vincent Geeraets, who
is a scholar of Legal Theory at
Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam in
The Netherlands. I encourage
you to read the entire article,
because the author leaves abso-
lutely no stone unturned, and he
cites sources for every claim he
makes, but I'm going to deliver
some highlights for you here.
Mr. Geeraets goes directly af-
ter WADA's own justifications for
its own Code, and the enforce-
ment of said Code. He starts
with WADA's three-part justifica-
tion for banning a substance.
WADA is committed to the fol-
lowing three criteria:
Medical or other scientific
evidence, pharmacological effect
or experience that the substance
or method, alone or in combi-
nation with other substances
or methods, has the potential
to enhance or enhances sport
performance;
Medical or other scientific
evidence, pharmacological effect
or experience that the use of the
substance or method represents
an actual or potential health risk
to the athlete;
WADA's determination that the
use of the substance or method
violates the spirit of sport de-
REHASHING WADA
Broc Tickle (flanked by Kyle Chisholm and Chris Blose) was on the starting
line at the Glen Helen National but, unfortunately, not on a motorcycle.
PHOTOGRAPHY
BY
KIT
PALMER
