Thanks Tom. It was good to hear you on Radio 5 Live this morning too!

Great thanks Rob, I hope it is of interest to some of your students!

Hi James, thanks for the comment. The samples tested last year that showed up meldonium would have all been anonymous at the lab and then not linked back to individuals. I would think the athletes were given warning of the changes at least once but probably more. Unless she had specifically declared the use of it openly then she may not have had anyone at the LTA know she was using it so not had an individual warning. If prescribed it by a Dr that doctor must shoulder some of the blame now as they should also know the rules and regs, but fundamentally it is part of her job as a highly remunerated athlete to check any medicine she takes is allowed! Thanks, we’ll see how it pans out.
Tom

James

Thanks Si, your last line there sums it up I think – if it isn’t on the official prohibited list then it could be considered fine to use. The athletes do have to fill in a form each time they give a sample, they are required to report all medicines and supplements they are taking. It will be interesting to see when/if Sharapova reported the use of the drug! her team should certainly have known about the change in status if they knew she was using this drug.
Thanks!
Tom

Hi Nic,
Thanks for the comments and great question. I suspect it has been ‘watched’ for a few years now, mentions come up on forums and word of mouth from other athletes will have alerted ‘the authorities’ to it. Officially they only monitored it in 2015, with the Cologne lab finding 2.2% of their samples positive for it…
As yet I have no idea how strictly they will treat this offence. My guess would be a 1-2 year ban but who knows??
Cheers
Tom

Really neat article and what that certainly elutes some of the “finer” details that cannot be obtained by simply glancing across at your neighbour’s Daily Mirror/Daily Mail/Sky News or Fox News iPad App!

Despite its recent promotion to “prohibited”, do we know how long Meldonium has been “watched” for? We certainly know it has been monitored for merely a year but it would be interesting to know if someone, somewhere had the foresight to begin monitoring its presence in the “athletic-marketplace”!

Likewise, as the compound has only recently undergone prohibition, what is the likelihood of her “sentence” being proportioned to “its” time in this category? i.e any professional use of Meldonium up to and including January 2016, will not be considered as a “positive-finding” but use Feb 2016 onwards, would be?

Nic Coltman