The never-ending battle with doping

Recently, 4 cases were identified positive for banned substances in training and competition (doping) at the 2024 National Bodybuilding Championship. All of this shows that limiting the use of doping, whether intentional or unintentional, by athletes has never been simple and is almost endless.

In sight but still "stuck" with doping

The 2024 National Bodybuilding Championship will take place in late October and early November in Ca Mau. This is a tournament where the Vietnam Doping and Sports Medicine Center will randomly sample and test. Previously, according to the 2024 plan, the Vietnam Doping and Sports Medicine Center had determined to randomly sample about 30 athletes in a number of tournaments in sports such as bodybuilding, swimming, athletics, weightlifting, etc.

The 2024 National Bodybuilding Championship has 4 cases of doping.

These are also individual sports, with many cases of doping at different levels and with many causes, from subjective to objective. Among these, bodybuilding has received more attention because many athletes have been banned from competing, and there was even a time when the national team roster was disrupted after random doping tests.

Simply put, bodybuilding has been on the radar of those working in anti-doping. However, unfortunately, at the 2024 National Bodybuilding Championship, there were still 4 positive cases of doping. The official notice of positive cases of doping will be sent by the Vietnam Center for Doping and Sports Medicine to the athlete's management unit this March. To ensure the principle, the identity of the athlete whose sample tested positive for doping is being kept confidential.

This once again shows that it is not easy to have a "clean" environment in top-level sports competitions. Obviously, athletes are well aware that their sport is in the sights of the anti-doping department. And in theory, they must be even more careful in their decisions about medication and nutrition to ensure they are not "infected" with doping. They certainly have enough knowledge to understand this and for some reason, they test positive for doping. This of course affects the athlete's top-level career and the image of the sport.

It is no coincidence that many sports and sports medicine experts agree that to solve the doping problem, the first and foremost thing is the awareness of coaches and athletes. Sports doctor Pham Manh Hung, who has worked for many years with national sports teams as well as in Hanoi, once said that through contact with athletes, it is clear that their knowledge of doping prevention and control will increase if it is continuously promoted. According to Dr. Pham Manh Hung, the team of doctors and medical staff who regularly contact athletes as well as the team's coaches are the ones who have the most effective impact on athletes on this issue. However, not all teams do this well.

In fact, the data on Vietnamese athletes "infected" with doping, although not fully reflecting the situation of doping use, whether intentional or unintentional, in Vietnamese sports, is also worrying.

At the 9th National Sports Festival in 2022, test results showed that 17 samples tested positive for doping out of nearly 200 samples taken. At the 31st SEA Games in 2022, Vietnamese sports had 6 cases of the athletics team "infected" with doping. In addition, when conducting tests before the 31st SEA Games, Vietnamese sports discovered 6 cases of bodybuilders "infected" with doping. And until now, there are 4 cases of "infected" with doping at the 2024 National Bodybuilding Championship...

How to monitor and prevent?

In an interview with the media, Director of the Vietnam Sports Administration Dang Ha Viet once affirmed that Vietnamese sports managers never have a policy of using doping in sports training and competitions. The important issue is to find many ways to help athletes stay away from doping. From there, it helps prolong their competitive careers and further enhance the position of Vietnamese sports.

Among the solutions proposed by the Sports sector, for several years now, anti-doping propaganda programs have been implemented by the Vietnam Doping and Sports Medicine Center in many tournaments and teams. Particularly in the national competition system in 2024, the Vietnam Doping and Sports Medicine Center has implemented anti-doping propaganda programs at national championships in swimming, wrestling, diving, shuttlecock kicking, judo, wushu, jujitsu, kurash, bodybuilding, volleyball, sepak takraw, shooting, taekwondo, weightlifting, and sports competitions for the disabled in badminton, table tennis, weightlifting, tennis, etc. Even local sports management units, including Hanoi , have proactively invited anti-doping experts to propagate and share experiences with coaches and athletes.

And in 2025, implementing the anti-doping propaganda program at national championships is also considered a key task of the Vietnam Center for Doping and Sports Medicine.

Of course, if we stop at propaganda, it will be difficult to stop all doping cases. Taking samples for doping tests at national sports tournaments in Vietnam still needs to be taken seriously. However, at present, the funding for this work of the Vietnam Doping and Sports Medicine Center is still limited. The Center only has enough funding to take about 30 doping samples/year at national sports tournaments and this number is really small compared to the demand for doping tests at tournaments.

For this reason, the center can only take doping samples at some tournaments of individual sports, which have a high risk of being "infected" with doping. Meanwhile, the local budget for doping testing for their own athletes is only on the fingers of one hand. And as many experts see, taking few doping samples at national sports tournaments is also a "bottleneck" in the fight against doping in the Vietnamese sports community.

It is very possible that, knowing this, many coaches and athletes will have a "careless" mentality in using medicine and nutrition. That leads to incorrect competition results, not reflecting reality and furthermore, inaccuracy in selecting athletes for the national team.

Therefore, the number of doping tests performed is higher than in the past, combined with continuous propaganda and self-awareness of coaches, athletes... will be important factors to help Vietnamese sports reduce headaches with doping, whether intentional or unintentional.

Doping sampling has not been conducted at the national volleyball tournament.

The 2025 National Volleyball Championship will start on March 22. The Vietnam Center for Doping and Sports Medicine said that, according to the plan, doping tests for athletes at the National Volleyball Championship have not been conducted. Currently, sampling has not been carried out in collective sports and is focusing on individual sports. (Minh Khue)