Because of item #1 above, ie he does not have a significant medical illness (ie life or limb threatening) that requires the use of dexamethasone.
Since the potential penalty is severe, shouldn't the application be filled out anyway as the lowest risk option. What's the harm of filling in a TUE even though the criteria seems borderline? Do you get banned for filling in a TUE?
You misunderstand me. I am not saying what they should have done in retrospect. My point is what do athletes need to do for the future to avoid this and one thing is to fill in TUE's two months (or even longer) after any medication or supplements to be on the safe side. In the future, the potential ban is 4 years which is being talked about.
Sigh. Maybe it's me not explaining things well. In the future, athletes are going to need to increase their margin of safety. Future action learnt from this experience.
From what we understand of how TUE works, as pcll99 had posted, those 3 requirements must be met. TUE, as you posted once or twice, is meant to balance the player's right to necessary medical treatment with medications that may be on the banned list. Such as steroid inhaler for asthma, or steroid for severe eczema/colitis/allergic reaction, etc. In LCW's case, he doesn't seem to have such a medical illness. Yes, he has an injury, but that doesn't require dexamethasone for standard medical treatment. So, even if his team had applied for a TUE, it'll very likely be rejected 100 percent based on the TUE rules. And his team is most likely very aware of the TUE rules, being a sports specialist clinic and all that deals with the latest stem cell technology. And turnaround time being likely a week at least, there isn't much chance for an application appeal once it's rejected, if he's applying within a few weeks of the in competition period.
Wasn't LCW not able to walk properly and had issue of pain then? If it was the case, I would think it was a health problem for his age. Stem cell therapy plus dexamethasone has certainly helped his recovery. So, I would think there would be no harm to apply on the safe side.
There was a thigh injury before Thomas Cup in May. But he continues to participate in a few tournaments after that. Things got worse and worse. There was a tear in his thigh muscle. But he was able to walk based on his various posts on facebook in early July.
I would think that he was not able to mobilize as usual because of tear muscle. It must be painful too.
Dexamethasone, as far as I'm aware is not the standard medically accepted treatment of muscle tears. For tendinitis such as tennis or golfer elbow maybe and it's used locally. So perhaps one possibility that LCW had the substance in him was maybe he was concurrently being treated for another injury such as tendinitis, or asthma, or allergic reaction to the stem cell treatment etc that required it's use. Then yes, his medical team could and should have applied for TUE. Then yes in not applying for one, they would've made a huge administrative error, which hopefully is what the mitigation process is all about...as we can see from the BKA error in LYD and KKJ case.
Yes, you are right. I hope LCW get well. Would the injection of dexamethasone into his thigh muscle increase his tolerance for pain and enable him to sustain efforts that would be unbearable under normal conditions?
It doesn't sound like you are thinking this through very carefully. First, I would ask you, if considered, when would you think it a logical time to do such an action and whether it is consistent with the known facts about his case.
He had three shots of stem cell, chronologically on 5th, 9th and 17th of July. So maybe injections of dexa on those three dates?
