3333THS Report: Drug Usage in Weightlifting in Thailand

This report analyzes the problem of drug usage within the sport of weightlifting in Thailand, focusing on the challenges and proposing recommendations. The executive summary highlights the impact of doping on the sports industry, particularly in Thailand, where several weightlifters faced bans due to positive drug tests. The report provides a background on the issue, referencing the 2020 Tokyo Games ban and past instances of doping. It justifies the significance of the topic by emphasizing Thailand's historical success in weightlifting and the damage caused by doping to the sport's integrity. The core of the report delves into the challenges, including social pressures on athletes, the lack of effective anti-doping policies and agencies, limitations in drug testing techniques, and issues with drug demarcations. Finally, the report recommends more basic-level anti-doping programs, moral training for athletes, and advanced doping test methods to combat drug abuse. This study aims to provide stakeholders in the sports industry with strategic solutions to maintain the fairness and integrity of sports.

Running head: Usage Of Drugs In The Sport Of Weightlifting In Thailand
USAGE OF DRUGS IN THE SPORT OF WEIGHTLIFTING IN
THAILAND

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Usage Of Drugs In The Sport Of Weightlifting In Thailand
Executive summary
The sports industry deals with several challenges and continuously tries to eradicate the
challenges so that the sports industry can flourish. Drug abuse is one of the common challenges
found in the sports industry imposed in front of both the sports industry practitioners and the
policy makers. The spotlight issue of this study is the issue of drug abuse in the sport of
weightlifting in Thailand. The background of the issue has been discussed here along with a
discussion of the challenges of doping. Some recommendations have been given that can be
helpful for the stakeholders of sports industry in order to retain the integrity of each and every
sport by reducing the intake of drug among the athletes.

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Usage Of Drugs In The Sport Of Weightlifting In Thailand
Table of Contents
Introduction......................................................................................................................................4
Background......................................................................................................................................4
Justification......................................................................................................................................5
Drugs and sports industry................................................................................................................5
Universal implication.......................................................................................................................6
Challenges........................................................................................................................................6
a. Social challenges......................................................................................................................7
b. Lack of anti doping policies and agencies...............................................................................7
c. Drug testing techniques............................................................................................................7
d. Drug demarcations...................................................................................................................7
Recommendations............................................................................................................................8
a. More basic level anti-doping programs....................................................................................8
b. Moral training..........................................................................................................................8
c. Advanced doping test methods................................................................................................8
Conclusion.......................................................................................................................................9
Reference list.................................................................................................................................10

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Usage Of Drugs In The Sport Of Weightlifting In Thailand
Introduction
The sports industry deals with several challenges and continuously tries to eradicate the
challenges so that the sports industry can flourish. Drug abuse is one of the common challenges
found in the sports industry imposed in front of both the sports industry practitioners and the
policy makers. So, the spotlight issue of this study is the issue of drug abuse in the sport of
weightlifting in Thailand. For that reason, the background of the issue has been discussed here
along with a discussion of the challenges of drug abuse in the sports industry. Finally, some
recommendations have been suggested that can be helpful for the sports industry stakeholders in
order to solve the issue of doping or drug abuse strategically.
Background
According to some reports, Thailand has been facing a major challenge in their
international weightlifting sports development. The reason behind this is that the international
weightlifters of Thailand have been banned from entering the 2020 Tokyo Games because of
being accused of doping. It has also been reported that two of the accused weightlifters were
Olympic champions of the previous year (Oliver, 2019). According to the sports policy, any
country with candidates with more than three positive doping results is considered as out of the
league. In this case, six Thai weightlifters have been involved in doping (ESPN, 2019).
However, two more candidates have been tested positive recently.
This issue of drug abuse is nothing new in the case of Thailand as similar issue raised in
the year 2011 when some teenage girls had been tested positive (Oliver, 2019). The interesting
part here is that the case of doping would not have been caught if the International Weightlifting
Federation would not have done extra doping tests on them. Over 600 sports persons were
declared negative and thus the issue of illegal drug abuse would not have been proved if the IWF
would not have used the GC-C-IRMS technique to test the athletes again. For that reason,
Thailand has imposed a self ban on the country from participating in the next Olympics Game in
the weightlifting. It has been found out that the drug abuse has involved at least one of the
banned drugs and multiple drug substances for some cases.

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Justification
Thailand has been one of the first rank nations to provide weightlifting champions to the
international weightlifting sports. According to the general secretary of the Weightlifting
federation of Asia, weightlifting is one of the most popular sports of Thailand. Many Thai
weightlifters, especially women, have been winners in the international weightlifting
competitions like Olympics. The development of women weightlifters majorly depends on how
the nation progresses in this field. It has been widely acknowledged that Thailand has shown
traditional growth in the field of weightlifting (CBC, 2019). However, the integrity of sports has
been damaged by the increasing doping issue.
Apart from Thailand, other nations like China and Russia have also suffered from similar
issue and have also faced ban from IWF in 2017. The shocking part of the whole issue is that two
of the Thai weightlifters won Olympics championship in earlier years despite the fact that they
were using illegal drug substances at that time (Bangkok Post, 2019). Lack of advanced doping
test techniques can also be blamed for the increasing drug abuse reports in the sports industry.
For that reason, many people have been suffering including those who were out of the
competition because they were competing with candidates using illegal performance enhancing
drugs. Thus, it can be said that drug issue has increased the complexity of sports development in
general which needs to be solved in order to keep the fair nature of the sports.
Drugs and sports industry
Use of drugs is very common in the sports industry and the tradition of taking drugs have
been continuing from ages. In the past, there were not enough scientific techniques to identify
the negative effects of the drugs that the athletes used to take. The intake of illegal performance
enhancing drugs has been termed as doping. Doping has been one of the most common barriers
for the stakeholders of sports industry including both the practitioners and the sports policy
makers (Reardon & Creado, 2019). The reason behind making the intake of these performance
enhancing drugs illegal is that the sports organizations feel that doping is highly unethical as it
makes the competition unfair. Thus, doping has been considered as cheating in the field of sports
development. The drugs that are commonly used by athletes are steroids, stimulants, anabolic

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drugs and so on. The purpose of all these types of drugs is to enhance the performance level of
the athletes either by reducing the stress level or by increasing the level of testosterone in the
body.
There is another form of doping where the competitors take some particular drugs in
some particular measure so that they can avoid detection by the doping tests. If the reason of the
banning on the basis of doping can be considered then it can be found that unfair means of
competition is not the only factor here (Gleaves, 2013). All the performance enhancing drugs
have severe negative effect on the drug takers. The athletes go through the risk of untimely
deaths due to the drug intake. Moreover, the spirit and integrity of sport can be seriously
damaged by this issue of drug abuse. However, according to the research done by Goldman, it
has been established that many athletes prefer an untimely death because of drug usage over a
drug free fair sports game (Birzniece, 2015). This is because somehow it has been imprinted on
their minds that success in the field of sports can only be brought by using performance
enhancing drugs.
Universal implication
Thailand is not the only nation and weightlifting is not the only sport that has been in the
spotlight for drug substance issues. On the contrary, countries like Germany, Russia, China and
many other countries have been facing this issue from a very long time. Many athletes have
blamed their coaches who according to them have forced them to take these drugs. Sports like
football, wrestling, weightlifting, cycling and many more have been in the news for doping
issues (Viollet, Minikin, Scelles & Ferrand, 2016). For that reason, universal sports development
has been seriously affected by this issue. So, many anti doping organizations have been
established in order to identify those athletes who are involved in doping. The tradition of
detecting the doping issues has been started in 1999 with the first global Anti-Doping Agency.
Challenges
The issue of doping or drug abuse has been posing many threats or challenges for the
stakeholders of the sports industry. These stakeholders include sports policy makers, sports

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practitioners, medical teams, athletes and the nations involved in national or international sports.
The challenges of this issue are multi-layered (Camporesi & Knukles, 2019). On one hand,
athletes have been facing various challenges which force them to use these illegal drugs. On the
other hand, the detection of doping has become a serious challenge for the stakeholders.
a. Social challenges
Most of the athletes involved in doping feel a social pressure that somehow encourage
them to take illegal drugs. Especially, in the sport of weightlifting, there is a socially acceptable
bodily image that all the weightlifters look up to. Steroids help them get the perfect and desired
body shape by inducing synthetic male hormone in their bodies (Morente-Sánchez & Zabala,
2013). On the other hand, it has been seen that coaches encourage the athletes to take drugs by
telling them that all the other competitors are doing the same. Apart from that, the athletes also
suffer from physical and psychological pressure to use these drugs. This is because they are
afraid of getting out of the league due to fitness issues.
b. Lack of anti doping policies and agencies
After investigating the case of Thailand, it can be said that there is a serious lack in the
existence of anti doping agencies that perform their tasks perfectly (Limsuknirun, Samahito &
Kutintara, 2017). However, campaigns like Play Asterisk have been held by international sports
committees in order to spread awareness against doping among the teenagers but the number of
these awareness programs is very less. On the other hand, there are a very few legislations
regarding the issue of doping apart from the 1989 Steroid Trafficking Act and the Anti-doping
Regulations 2006. The implementation of the existing legislation is also under question.
c. Drug testing techniques
As mentioned above, the IWF has detected the illegal drug takers from Thailand after an
advanced doping test. However, two of these weightlifters remained undetected during the
previous international weightlifting competition that led to their victory (Dvorak, Saugy &
Pitsiladis, 2014). Thus, the entire integrity and fairness of the sport have been seriously damaged
just because the doping test techniques were not advanced enough to catch the cheaters. For that
reason, all the fair and eligible competitors have suffered along with their nations that invested
on them.

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d. Drug demarcations
There is a lack of drug demarcation system that separates the legal drugs from the illegal
drugs. For that reason, many athletes and coaches suggest drugs that they do not know are
illegal. Performance enhancing drugs are not all together banned or illegal. The legality of the
drugs depends upon the adverse affects of the drugs on the health of the drug takers and also on
the fact that those drugs make the competitions unfair. There is an ongoing debate among the
policy makers and sports organizations regarding which drugs should be illegal and which
should not (Miragaia, Ferreira & Carreira, 2014). The confusion among the concerned personas
regarding the drug demarcations also pose as a challenge to the entire sports industry.
Recommendations
The following recommendations are for the stakeholders of the sports industry. The
suggested recommendations can be helpful not only for dealing with the doping issue of
Thailand weightlifters but also for the universal doping issue that has been contaminating the
sports industry all together from a very long time.
a. More basic level anti-doping programs
Athletes start their sports career mostly from their school days. It has been seen that many
school level athletes involve in taking performance enhancing drugs. This tendency increases
gradually and the same behaviour has been seen when these athletes compete in national and
international level of sports. Thus, school level anti-doping programs such as Adolescents
Training and Learning to Avoid Steroids or ATLAS, Athletes Targeting Healthy Exercise and
Nutrition Alternatives or ATHENA and so on need to be implemented more so that the doping
issue can be eradicated from the roots (National Institute on Drug Abuse, 2019).
b. Moral training
Many campaigns need to be started that can enhance the moral and ethical sense of both
the coaches and the players. It has to be kept in mind that the tendency of taking drugs come
from the social and mental pressure on the minds of the athletes to always be the winner (The
economist, 2019). This set of mentality needs to be changed and this can be done by making
them understand the true spirit of sports.

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c. Advanced doping test methods
Most of the drug takers know that no one can ever catch them. Thus, they do not think
twice before taking harmful drugs in high measures. This can be reduced if the doping test
methods can become more accurate (Verroken, 2016). For example, tests like gas
chromatography-combustion-IRMS can be used for advanced results. The advanced nature of the
tests is needed so that no athlete can cheat the tests.
Conclusion
This study has revolved mainly around the drug issue of the Thailand weightlifters. The
purpose of this study has been to foreground the challenge of doping in the sports industry and
how this challenge can be dealt with. Moreover, some recommendations have been given that
can be helpful for the stakeholders of sports industry in order to retain the integrity of each and
every sport by reducing the intake of drug among the athletes.

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Reference list
Bangkok Post (2019), Olympic champ among 4 Thai weightlifters to test positive, Retrieved on:
7th Aug, 2019, From: https://www.bangkokpost.com/sports/1616402/olympic-champ-
among-4-thai-weightlifters-to-test-positive
Birzniece, V. (2015). Doping in sport: effects, harm and misconceptions. Internal medicine
journal, 45(3), 239-248. Retrieved on: 7th Aug, 2019, From:
http://pilarmartinescudero.es/Feb-Mayo2015/doping%20in%20sport%20effects.pdf
Camporesi, S.,& Knukles, J., (2019), The solution to doping is to extend the blame beyond
athletes, Retrieved on: 7th Aug, 2019, From: https://aeon.co/ideas/the-solution-to-doping-
is-to-extend-the-blame-beyond-athletes
CBC (2019), Thailand volunteers to sit out Olympic weightlifting over doping, Retrieved on: 7th
Aug, 2019, From: https://www.cbc.ca/sports/olympics/2020-olympics-weightlifting-
thailand-doping-1.5048537
Dvorak, J., Saugy, M., & Pitsiladis, Y. P. (2014). Challenges and threats to implementing the
fight against doping in sport. Br J Sports Med, 48(10), 807-809. Retrieved on: 7th Aug,
2019, From: https://bjsm.bmj.com/content/bjsports/48/10/807.full.pdf
ESPN (2019), Thailand out of 2020 weightlifting over doping, Retrieved on: 7th Aug, 2019,
From:http://www.espn.com/espnw/sports/article/26183245/thailand-2020-weightlifting-
doping
Gleaves, J. (2013). Exploring new avenues to the doping debate in sports: a test-relevant
approach. FairPlay, Revista de Filosofia, Ética y Derecho del Deporte, 1(2), 39-63.
Retrieved on: 7th Aug, 2019, From:
https://www.raco.cat/index.php/FairPlay/article/download/269801/357340
Limsuknirun, N., Samahito, S., & Kutintara, I. (2017). A Study of Key Success Factors of Thai
Weightlifters in the World Weightlifting Championships and the Olympic Games. ABAC

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Journal, 37(1), 119-133. Retrieved on: 7th Aug, 2019, From:
http://www.assumptionjournal.au.edu/index.php/abacjournal/article/download/2857/1844
Miragaia, D. A. M., Ferreira, J., & Carreira, A. (2014). Do stakeholders matter in strategic
decision making of a sports organization?. Revista de Administração de Empresas, 54(6),
647-658. Retrieved on: 7th Aug, 2019, From: http://www.scielo.br/scielo.php?pid=S0034-
75902014000600647&script=sci_arttext&tlng=pt
Morente-Sánchez, J., & Zabala, M. (2013). Doping in sport: a review of elite athletes’ attitudes,
beliefs, and knowledge. Sports medicine, 43(6), 395-411. Retrieved on: 7th Aug, 2019,
From: http://www.pilarmartinescudero.com/bibliografia_dopaje/australianos/
actitudesdopajeZabala.pdf
National Institute on Drug Abuse (2019), Steroids and Other Appearance and Performance
Enhancing Drugs (APEDs), Retrieved on: 7th Aug, 2019, From:
https://www.drugabuse.gov/publications/research-reports/steroids-other-appearance-
performance-enhancing-drugs-apeds/what-can-be-done-to-prevent-steroid-misuse
Oliver, B., (2019), All three of Thailand’s weightlifting world champions suspended after new
doping cases are revealed, Retrieved on: 7th Aug, 2019, From:
https://www.insidethegames.biz/articles/1075313/all-three-of-thailands-weightlifting-
world-champions-suspended-after-new-doping-cases-are-revealed
Oliver, B., (2019), Weightlifting: Thailand faces Olympic ban after six positives at worlds,
Retrieved on: 7th Aug, 2019, From: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-weightlifting-
doping-thailand/weightlifting-thailand-faces-olympic-ban-after-six-positives-at-worlds-
idUSKCN1PH21L
Reardon, C., & Creado, S., (2019), Drug abuse in athletes, Retrieved on: 7th Aug, 2019, From:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4140700/
The economist (2019), How to stop doping in sports, Retrieved on: 7th Aug, 2019,
From:https://www.economist.com/leaders/2018/02/08/how-to-stop-doping-in-sports

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Verroken, M., (2016), Here’s how to stop the sporting drug cheats in their tracks, Retrieved on:
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the-sporting-drug-cheats-in-their-tracks/
Viollet, B., Minikin, B., Scelles, N., & Ferrand, A. (2016). Perceptions of key stakeholders
regarding national federation sport policy: The case of the French rugby union. Managing
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