World Anti-Doping Agency

Wada investigates weightlifting violations

In a scathing report released earlier this month, McLaren and his team found that the IWF had been plagued by decades of corruption and also discovered the doping infractions.

These include gold and silver medallists who have not had their samples dealt with.

McLaren's investigation determined that the IWF's former president Tamas Ajan used "the tyranny of cash" to maintain control and the primary sources of this money came from doping fines paid personally to him.

Corticosteroids may be banned

Corticosteroids, which are used in anti-inflammatory medicines to treat a range of conditions, are allowed out of competition by athletes and permitted in competition by obtaining a therapeutic use exemption.

Last year Carter, along with Racing 92 team-mates Rokocoko and Juan Imhoff, created international headlines when traces of corticosteroids showed up in drugs tests taken by the trio following last season's Top 14 final in Barcelona.

WADA keeps thyroid medication off banned-substances list

After reports that a number of athletes coached by former Boston and New York Marathon winner Alberto Salazar use the medication, the British anti-doping agency and others asked WADA to consider putting it on its banned-substance list.

But when the list came out last week, that medicine wasn't on it.

Positive doping tests declined in 2014

The figure, the second consecutive annual fall, is contained in a WADA report on all tests analysed by WADA-accredited laboratories in 2014 and entered on its Anti-Doping Administration & Management System (ADAMS).

What the report cannot do, of course, is answer the $64,000 question: does this decline mean that fewer athletes in Olympic sports are attempting to use drugs to gain an illicit edge, or does it rather reflect that those who do are getting better at evading detection?