After the recent Steroids in Powerlifting and Olympic Weightlifting post I was interested in the number of athletes who got caught for a certain banned substance.
Thanks to Anton, whose ninja like spreadsheet skills made counting the top 10 super easy.
The data comes from the IWF sanctioned athletes page.
As you can see taking something that contains Metandienone (Methandrostenolone, trade names Averbol, Dianabol, Danabol) is probably not the smartest choice. Out of 209 positive tests, 93 were for this stuff …
Here are the corresponding numbers.
| Substance | # of People Caught |
| Metandienone | 93 |
| Methyltrienolone + Nandrolone | 19 |
| Stanozolol | 17 |
| Methylhexanamine | 14 |
| Norandrosterone | 12 |
| Testosterone variants | 10 |
| Clenbuterol | 7 |
| Boldenone | 7 |
| Methyltestosterone | 5 |
| Methylhexaneamine | 4 |
Here are the raw data. Click on “Pivot” to sort them for number of occurrences.
One thing I find very interesting is the harsh compounds women are using. Dianabol and Oral Trenbolone, this sounds like horrible unavoidable side effects for women. I’ve talked openly with a friend who is an IFBB pro bodybuilder (female) and she said she uses winstrol, EQ, anavar, and GH. Although i’m sure some use harsher drugs. Its also interesting there are zero bans for Anavar, I’m not sure if this means they dont use it or if they are not getting caught with it.
From what I’ve heard most women in fitness industry would use low doses of gh/anavar/primo and cutting drugs like clen and t3. These drugs won’t give women side effects like trenbolone or dianabol will if used responsibly. Yet I’m sure the best female weightlifters probably don’t care too much and too damage their body a bit. I think this study juse shows how easy it is to get caught with dbol/deca like someone posted above. Yet I think test/anavar/gh are used by pretty much everyone and if used correctly you won’t catch them with it. These drugs can also all be had by prescriptions so you can get really high quality unlike relying on UGL labs which usually have weak gear.
I thought the lack of bans for oxandrolone was unusual as well. That genuinely surprised me since it’s fairly well known for increasing strength without increasing mass.
I think many of baned lifters also are suprise. If you know what i mean.
Norandrosterone is a metabolite of Nandrolone, so if you clump those two together it is the #2 in positive tests. The drugs on this list are all synthetic or found in very low concentrations naturally (compared to what is performance enhancing).
You should also update your table with Testosterone, because there are 8 positive tests for T:E ratio >4.0. That doesn’t prove they used exogenous testosterone but it’s still Testosterone that they were banned for having too much of…
Like I suggested in a previous post any list like this is going to be biased towards the steroids which are more popular, effective, cleared from the system faster (because they know they have to beat a test), and then ones more easily detected by not being a naturally produced hormone.
Correction, 10 positive tests for Testosterone, because two of the positives were labeled as:
Testosterone, Epitestosterone.
I’m presuming this means they passed the T:E ratio but exceeded the maximum limit for Epitestosterone concentration, thus indicating possible Epitestosterone use as a masking agent to maintain the T:E ratio while using exogenous Testosterone.
Thanks for the info. Updated.
I didn’t realize Liao Hui’s suspension was over already. Hopefully we see him again on the platform. He was a G
Detection time of methandienone is pretty short, imagine it would be 100% gone 4 weeks after last dose… Are these guys taking it a week out from comp, or is this from the random testing? still not 100% sure how this stuff works.
I’d like to know tooRob