The Belgian bodybuilding championship has been canceled after doping officials showed up and all the competitors fled. A doping official says bodybuilders just grabbed their gear and ran off when he came into the room. “I have never seen anything like it and hope never to see anything like it again,” doping official Hans Cooman [pictured here, in another of his professional roles] said Monday.
So says a May 18, 2009 Associated Press report. Details can be expect to find their way, eventually, into the Doping Journal. The new, high level of achievement extends a tradition of Belgian doping excellence, as can be seen in a 2003 study done by staff scientists at the Doping Control Laboratory at the University of Ghent [who are pictured below, perhaps expressing excitement at the prospect of having new data]:
“The prevalence of doping in Flanders in comparison to the prevalence of doping in international sports,” Peter Van Eenoo and Frans Delbeke, International Journal of Sports Medicine, vol. 24, no. 8, November 2003, pp. 565-70. The authors report: “During the period 1993 – 2000, doping was detected in all sports in Flanders, for which a representative number of samples was tested except mini-soccer, where no positive doping samples were found. The use of doping among male athletes is significantly higher than for female athletes. Bodybuilding and power lifting had the highest incidence of positive cases in Flanders.”
