The Norwegian television channel NRK reported the other day that the anti-doping agency Wada had noted that Olympic athletes in Paris last year registered that they used medication for people with severe obesity.
I was actually really sad when I read that they started using diet pills in sports, says Therese Johaug in the podcast Gukild & Johaug , according to NTB.
Should it be allowed and is it ethical to use a diet drug to perform in sports? What signals does it send to younger active people who have them as role models?
WADA has the substance semaglutide, which is found in obesity drugs such as Wegovy and Ozempic, on its monitoring list.
"Wada is considering banning this and I think they should. For many years I have fought to eliminate the problem of eating disorders in sports," says the Norwegian.
The national team is sponsored
She herself has talked about how she struggled with eating disorders in her youth, and American star Jessie Diggins has also been open about it.
The Swedish skiers do not want to comment on the fact that the Swedish national ski team has been sponsored by Novo Nordisk, which is behind Ozempic. However, Ebba Andersson said that there are some problems considering that the drug is used for rapid weight loss and that cross-country skiing is a sport with eating disorder problems.
"I certainly understand the problem with this issue, considering that we are fronting a company that is behind a fairly controversial drug. It is controversial because it is actually used in contexts where it should not be," Andersson told Aftonbladet .
Difficult to ban
Ozempic is primarily a diabetes medication and is also used as a treatment for obesity.
Doping expert Åke Andrén-Sandberg has written in a newsletter that he does not believe that medicines containing the substance semaglutide will be placed on WADA's list of prohibited substances.
"It is difficult to imagine putting Ozempic/Wegowy/Rybelsus and Munjaro on a prohibited list without being able to define which pharmacological effect can increase performance," the doctor wrote.
