By laying charges against the Essendon Football Club, WorkSafe Victoria has accepted that its mandate extends to professional sports.
AAP/Tracey Nearmy
The implications of the bringing of OHS charges extend far beyond Essendon. For WorkSafe Victoria and professional sporting competitions, it is the equivalent of crossing the rubicon.
Feet to the fire. Is athletics going the way of cycling?
Reuters/Kevin Coombs
This week the AFL announced revisions to its illicit drug policy. With strident critics calling for “zero tolerance” and even criminal sanctions for transgressions, it is an opportunity to reflect on why…
NRL players Aaron Gray and Dylan Walker suffered a life-threatening reaction to a combination of controlled drugs.
AAP/David Moir
The use of prescription-only painkillers by athletes is hardly new, but debate about their (ab)use in Australia has recently been brought into focus by the emergency hospitalisation of South Sydney NRL…
FIFA, world football’s governing body, continues to be embroiled in scandal.
EPA/Ennio Leanza
In sport, there seems no reasonable justification for drawing a line in the sand that places drug use on one side and the other performance enhancers on the other.
Athletics’ reputation could be about to plumb the same depths as cycling.
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In March 2015, Karmichael Hunt pleaded guilty to four counts of cocaine possession. This coincided with the end of his career at the Gold Coast Suns AFL club. At the close of the court case, a colleague…
Sports scientist Stephen Dank outside his Ascot Vale home in Melbourne in, 2013.
AAP Image/Julian Smith
The so-called “blackest day” in Australian sport can now instead be described as the precursor to its foggiest period, following the exoneration of 34 Essendon players from taking a banned drug.
An Australian study found certain elite athletes were more at risk of taking drugs than others.
Lee Morley/Flickr
Our study found that 8% of the 1,684 elite Australian athletes we surveyed said they had used at least one of six illicit drugs – including ecstasy, cocaine and cocaine – over the previous year.
Gold Coast Titan Greg Bird could face action by WADA on top of court charges stemming from drug supply allegations.
AAP/Dave Hunt
The World Anti-Doping Authority looks on from the sidelines in case there is an opportunity to punish athletes’ involvement with illicit drugs out of competition.
Rugby union star Karmichael Hunt has been stood down by his club pending a court appearance on drug supply charges.
AAP/Dan Peled
Alex Rodriguez, the New York Yankees’ erstwhile third baseman, has had an interesting career in more ways than one. His use of steroids has resulted in a sullied reputation and a one-year suspension without…
Australian sport has been in a so-called ‘crisis’ since 2013, but what is the best way address it?
AAP/Lukas Coch
The “crisis” in Australian sport in 2013 prompted calls for change to rebuild integrity and public trust. But while beefing up policing and instituting harsher penalties seems to be a natural reaction…
The growing number of Australians illicitly using the drug clenbuterol to lose weight and build muscle mass are putting themselves at risk of heart attack, researchers say. Clenbuterol is legally prescribed…
What’s changed since the ACC report was handed down?
Flickr/ hitthatswitch
A year after the “darkest day in Australian sport” the catastrophic bang has led to an all too predictable whimper. The days after the Australian Crime Commission’s report Organised Crime and Drugs in…
Many more Australians want to build the ‘body beautiful’ and we want to do it in a hurry, increasingly through the use of performance and image enhancing drugs (PIEDs).
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High-profile claims of links between elite sports and organised crime in Australia – such as those outlined in last year’s Australian Crime Commission (ACC) report – have put performance and image enhancing…