Catching the cheats : advances in the detection of endogenous steroid abuse in sport FEATURE

3 MARCH 2006 Sport is important in many people’s lives. For professional athletes it represents their occupation, for amateur athletes their vocation, and for many millions of spectators, watching it is their favoured recreational activity. Sport today is big business: product promotion and sponsorship continue to rise at an extraordinary rate. For an athlete, the difference between a gold and a silver medal can mean several million sponsorship dollars. Financial reward, fame and ambition drive some athletes to use performance-enhancing substances to give them ‘the edge’. Accordingly, sport has developed mutual ties with science in the area of doping control in an effort to uphold the ideal of fair play and protect the health of athletes.