Edmund Willison Profile picture
| A journalist investigating doping, and sports medicine, in elite sport l https://t.co/vCeYnHJe2w l
Feb 9 12 tweets 6 min read
With all of the recent debate about doping in football, after Gary Neville and Roy Keane said that Italian teams they played against weren’t “clean”, I thought I’d do a 🧵on doping in football.

Read along, some of the stories you may know, others you may not.

So let’s begin 🪡 Image Between 2015 and 2020, 15 Premier league players failed drug tests (one for hormones) but zero were banned.

Lenience towards the stars?

Over the same period, players outside of the top flight were sanctioned…..63% of the time. Image
Jun 22, 2022 27 tweets 9 min read
Hello @Madison_Keys and @andreapetkovic, I really hope you did read our article before your tweets. @schnejan

But either way, here is another explainer for you both.

But really this thread is for tennis 🎾 fans who have no idea what the Athlete Biological Passport is.

1/🧵 To recap: once or twice a year, in the days before major tournaments, competing players are notified by the ITF that they have to book a slot to submit an Athlete Biological Passport (ABP) blood sample.

This happened before the French Open 19, US Open 21⬇️,Miami Open 22.

2/
Jan 12, 2022 10 tweets 3 min read
Prosecutors have charged a Texas-based therapist with providing banned drugs to athletes, including Blessing Okagbare, before Tokyo 2020.

The affidavit shows sprinters dope now, just like they did 15 years ago. Nothing has changed. I explain.

🧵 The investigation into the therapist, Eric Lira, started when an informant ("Individual-1") discovered banned drugs (HGH, IGF-1, EPO, those old classics) in the residence, in Florida, of an unidentified athlete (Athlete-2). One package was addressed to Okagbare (Athlete-1).
Jul 12, 2020 27 tweets 9 min read
Today, the Mail on Sunday pulls back the curtain on a top-secret London 2012 research project run by UK Sport.

This is a thread on how, over the past year, we slowly pieced together the facts of this story and how the governing body’s risk taking unfolded in Olympic year.

1/ In November, in wake of Alberto Salazar’s 4-year doping ban, @draper_rob, our editor and I sat down at the MoS offices and decided alongside @sportingintel we would look into the practices of UK governing bodies.

Why?

Salazar was an UK Athletics consultant.

2/
Sep 27, 2019 12 tweets 5 min read
A thread:

In 2012, Ugandan 800m runner Annet Negesa (1.59.08) was withdrawn from the Olympics because she had naturally high levels of testosterone.

She says she felt obliged to undergo surgery to comply with the IAAF hyperandrogenism regulations.

telegraph.co.uk/athletics/2019…

1/
She identified IAAF doctor Stephane Bermon as the man examining her in a hospital in Nice, France.

Negesa underwent a gonadectomy/castration back home in Uganda performed by another doctor.

Negesa says she was proposed this surgery.

2/