Parfyanovіch: Specialists with syringes made me use dope in 1984

An Olympic Champion Uladzimir Parfyanovich has told ERB how he used dope in 1984 and stressed that criminal responsibility should be introduced for it.
A medal the Olympic rowing Champion Uladzimir Parfyanovich does not need now is stored in the Museum of Olympic Pride. He won the medal due to dope. The famous sportsman explained ERB that he had no choice at that time. He was “ordered” to do it:

"The medial is “Friendship - 1984”. Our specialists arrived with long syringes and said: “Records at any price!” If you don’t want to take it - just leave. An I was in a team of four and my colleagues asked me: “If you refuse, what about us?” So I simply had to obey”.

According to the former sportsman, the feeling after having taking dope is wonderful:

“You go to a training session and when you are done 30 minutes later you feel as if you didn’t train at all. You feel wonderful. It seems you could work like a horse. But then you experience a terrible recession and you have a hard time trying to cope with it”.

Now Uladzimir Parfyanovich urges to introduce criminal responsibility for using dope:

“Criminal responsibility should be introduced in our country!”

Surprisingly, Belarus has no law about dope. The Law on Physical Culture and Sport says that sportsmen are refused the right to participate in a competition and should be punished according to the legislation if his or her dope test is positive. However, the legislation contains no information about any responsibility for it. The director of the National antidoping agency Mikalai Kruchynski says that only “dirty” sportsmen should be responsible for it:

“The majority of positive results of dope tests are registered in athletes. The law on dope is not being worked on in our country at the moment. We are preparing documents necessary to join the UNESCO International Convention against Doping in Sport. According to the World Anti-Doping Code, responsibility for using dope is on the sportsman”.

The editor-in-chief of “Pressball” Uladzimir Berazhkou thinks that criminal responsibility should also be imposed on the couch and the doctor of the sportsman:

“There is nothing more shameful for a sportsman then being accused of using dope. The responsibility should be imposed on the doctor, the coach and the sportsman”.

Every Belarusian sportsman has to go through dope tests at least four times a year. However, according to Mikalai Kruchynski, not all sportsmen take those tests:

“I cannot tell that we check all teams before international competitions. All the tests are done by the Antidoping Laboratory in Moscow. It costs 200-250 USD. If any forbidden substances are discovered, there will be an investigation to find out whether it happened accidentally or not. If it isn’t – the sportsman will be disqualified”.

An Olympic Champion in athletics Yanina Karolchyk that was disqualified for using dope said that international antidoping organizations were simply hunting for Belarusian sportsmen:

“They do not let us train normally. It seems that the international federation chooses several sportsmen and hunts for them”.

By the way, ERB found out that Yanina’s “harsh” words irritated the International Antidoping Committee.

Photo by — www.ucpb.org