Root and Stokes grind down weary India to stretch lead beyond 100
‘What PEDs help to build, they also destroy’
JOHN WIGHT discusses the increased usage of performance-enhancing drugs among elite level boxers, and tells the powerful story of his own past experiences with them
Conor Benn
ON THE back of the Conor Benn failed drugs tests, given that we now know he failed not one but two Vada tests for the same banned substance — the woman’s fertility drug clomifene — boxing has come under the kind of scrutiny that the sport’s movers and shakers most definitely will not have welcomed.
Regardless, it has been a long time coming and who knows at this juncture where it will end? This particular question carries even more significance because of the claims made by Benn’s sports doctor, one Dr Usman Sajjad, in podcast interview last year.
He claimed that you would have to be an idiot to fail a test for performance-enhancing drugs (PEDs) in England, before going on to state that he believes between 80 and 90 per cent of professional boxers are regularly taking them.
More from this author
Mary Kom’s fists made history in the boxing world. Malak Mesleh’s never got the chance. One story ends in glory, the other in grief — but both highlight the defiance of women who dare to fight, writes JOHN WIGHT
The Khelif gender row shows no sign of being resolved to the satisfaction of anyone involved anytime soon, says boxing writer JOHN WIGHT
When Patterson and Liston met in the ring in 1962, it was more than a title bout — it was a collision of two black archetypes shaped by white America’s fears and fantasies, writes JOHN WIGHT
In the land of white supremacy, colonialism and the foul legacy of the KKK, JOHN WIGHT knows that to resist the fascism unleashed by Trump is to do God’s work
