Climbing, Performance Enhancing Drugs, Olympics

There is a full-page advertisement for performance enhancing drugs (peds) in the current issue of Climbing Magazine as well as recent threads in MP on the subject. This advertisement indicates that drug distributors believe that climbers are a good target audience. The fact that climbing will be in the 2020 Olympics raises some questions.

These substances are banned in Olympic sports and are rigorously tested for. In current climbing competitions, peds are not tested for. I have no idea to what extent such drugs are used by competitive climbers, but it’s certainly possible some climbers available themselves of peds. If so, would their not being used in Olympic competition result in a decline in performance, say, like the decline in home run hitting when Major League Baseball began to rigorously test for peds?

How would such a decline be detected? Perhaps detectable in speed climbing, but rather hard to pin down in other events unless the declines in performance were significant.

Rob.calm

rob.calm wrote: This advertisement indicates that drug distributors believe that climbers are a good target audience. 

They probably saw all those Sprinters decked out and thought, "there's a user group with money to burn" 

You sure they aren't being tested? I thought Puccio is (voluntarily?) tested by WADA and Sharma was booted from competitions for testing positive for marijuana. Then again, there's plenty of current competitors who obviously enjoying weed..

If the Olympic testing is perfect, you can look at Olympic athlete performance in non-Olympic events. They're bound to compete with people who don't compete in the Olympics and will dope as much as possible. Since the testing won't actually be perfect, you could compare the performance of people who are caught after the fact with people who aren't caught. Unfortunately, "not caught" will include dopers and non-dopers.

It would be sadfunny if all the athletes doped, none of the forerunners or routesetters did, and all the athletes send everything on the first go. Then we'd just have three separate types of speed climbing competitions, resulting in maximum American grump.

I was actually under the impression that a lot of historical, bold ascents were done while the climber was completely out their mind. Matt Samet wrote a book about his addiction.

I've had partners order shady pills online for the pursuit of sending the higher grade to go with their flavor of the week diet. You haven't?

In the other direction, how many recreational "alpinists" get a little somethin' somethin' in their body to "knock off" Everest? Are there asterisks to these ascents? Cripes we can't get a flatlander here to walk up a 14er without them first getting a script for diamox. In the end, does it matter?

The Olympics are a different thing altogether, can we all agree? Making a sport out of something as ridiculous as climbing rocks. Well done. I bet the climbers competing are laughing all the way to the bank.  

Everett wrote: Then again, there's plenty of current competitors who obviously enjoying weed..

I certainly can't speak on behalf of competitive climbers or elite climbers....But, I'd hardly call marijuana a "performance enhancing drug." Last I checked, you can get stuffed into the off-width pillow section of the couch while laughing hysterically when eating a bowl of ice cream and still not send any harder than the day before. 

I personally don't give a toot about weed, but it's on the prohibited list for some reason:

• Natural cannabinoids, e.g. cannabis, hashish and
marijuana,
• Synthetic cannabinoids e.g. Δ9-tetrahydrocannabinol
(THC) and other cannabimimetics.

Except:
• Cannabidiol.

For weed, WADA removed CBD from the banned list, and raised their threshold of what they consider a legal amount of THC to the point where you basically have to be blitzed during competition, and I think USADA is actually accepting Theraputic use exemptions in certain cases. 

Apprantly Ibogaine has become very popular with the pro climber crowd. They use it for "mental recovery". Whatever the hell that means, I don't know.