Medical doctors and doping in sport: Attitudes and experience in Balkan Region - 8 countries study

Summary

Athletes from the Balkan have lost on the last two Olympic Games 5 medals and 5 athletes have been doping positive on out of competition testing, which represents 36% doping positive of all athletes in Sidney 2000 and 24% in Athens 2004. The aim of this study is to examine attitudes and experience of medical doctors from Balkan Countries in doping in sport.

Methodology

A total of 219 medical doctors from Bulgaria, Greece, Romania, Serbia  and Turkey fulfilled the questionnaire related to doping control procedure, athletes’ rights and responsibilities, their training in doping prevention and willingness to have more education.

Results

During the period of 12 months, 80% doctors have been asked for information about doping agents, 25% of them have been contacted by athletes for the prescription of doping agents, 14% of doctors think that they should assist athletes who want to use doping so that athletes can use doping safely and in 27% of the doctors have treated athletes who are using doping due to medical problems. They believe that education is the most effective method to fight against doping and they believe that the least effective method is two years ban. They indicated adolescents and children as a first group which needs to be targeted in a doping prevention, professional athletes as a second and amateur athletes as a third one.