UKC

Looks overall that the fancy bears hack has exposed an issue that has been grumbling along for a while.
As a high level athlete it does seem generally helpful to your performance be diagnosed and allowed treatment for medical conditions that one would expect not to help performance at punter level. There is little doubt the current system is being abused by some.
Although there are some negatives to removing anonymity from the current TUE process do you think athletes should accept this as another price to be paid for competing?

In reply to gregor:


Need to be careful not to generalise on the basis of a few self-selecting examples. How many athletes have had TUEs and still under-performed as the condition was worse than the treatment was able to compensate for? Would we ever hear about them?

I'm increasingly of the opinion that if an athlete needs to take prohibited substances they should not be allowed to compete while under their influence. Sounds tough but if I break a leg in training I wouldn't be able to compete (or technically perhaps I wouldn't be able to keep up!) so if I have other medical ailments during competition season I should accept the same limitation on competiveness. No doubt there are cases where this approach would seem harsh but it would definitely help limit suspicion and 'accidental' benefit from taking things other competitors are denied.

In reply to gregor:




In a word, yes.

In reply to JohnArran - the big problem with that is that , in my experience, elite athletes are sick all the time, or rather, running a very fine line of getting sick or injured.