ABSTRACT
The debate in the changing rooms surrounding drugs testing and the prohibition regime has increased due to the large number of recent high profile cases of positive tests for nandrolone. Despite there having been 343 cases worldwide in the past year at time of writing,1 there is statistical evidence that there has been no real increase in their number, and these figures also show that athletics has a lower incident rate than other sports. Nevertheless, athletes feel under pressure as there is a theoretical possibility that athletes who have not intentionally taken nandrolone may still fail a test due to innocently ingesting it through a food supplement or by natural production of the substance within their body. Hopefully, answers to such theoretical possibilities will become known once the currently running inquiries of both the International Amateur Athletics Federation (IAAF) and the Fédération Internationale de Football Association (FIFA) have been completed. However, these cases throw up issues of wider concern which deserve further comment.
