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No, she got pinged for a drug that was added to the banned list.
If fat choppers like me who get tested now and then can keep up with the list, then sure as shit some multimillion £££ full time fucking athlete should know the rules.
hippy-
Yeah I meant that, she had been using the drug for a fucking long time, her entire career, then it gets banned all of a sudden and she gets popped. So yes she was stupid but it also illustrates the arbitary nature of what is banned and what isn't, and that it can take WADA a long time to decide whether something is performance-enhancing or not, or at least performance-enhancing enough to be banned. If riders shouldn't be using tramadol then the authorities should just fucking ban it, rather than a team or rider's ethics be questioned for using it.
Makes me wonder what other drugs yet-to-be-banned are being used.
Jimmy_Fingers
Quite frankly most of cycling and professional sport fall into that grey area. Whether a drug is banned or not is quite arbitrary, hence why Sharapova got pinged for a drug she had been using for years. But he flat out says Sky isn't doping.
As for tramadol the use of it in-competition is well-documented and widespread. A lot of riders carry a finish bottle, usually a mixture of painkillers and caffeine tablets. Will it give you an edge at the sharp end of the race? Probably, but the bottom line until such practises are banned then nobodies done anything wrong.