A 14-year-old male cyclist tested
positive for a powerful anabolic steroid after a regional race,
Italy's National Anti-Doping Organisation (NADO) said Wednesday.
The boy, who tested positive for Mesterolone, is the youngest
person ever caught doping in Italy, it said.
He was immediately suspended by the Italian Olympic Committee
(CONI).
"Resorting to doping in sport is already something criminal;
in a case like this we are faced with a crime against humanity,"
doping expert Carlo Tranquilli told ANSA.
"It's madness," said Tranquilli, head of the Lazio chapter of
the Italian sports doctors federation FMSI and former Italy
under-21 soccer team doctor.
"We're well beyond ordinary crime here. Something beyond all
logic, which is perverted in itself. But in the case of a kid,
because at 14 you're just a kid, the picture becomes really
worrying.
"At a youth level, too, doping is strongly rooted now. That
means that those children have fully fledged criminal
organisations around them.
Mesterolone, he added, "is an anabolic steroid with
devastating side effects".
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