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Clean and Honest Mountaineering: Reality or Illusion? The conference at the Brixen IMS

On Saturday 18 October 18 the International Mountain Summit at Brixen will hold the conference "Clean and Honest Mountaineering: Reality or Illusion?" Organised by the Master in Mountain Medicine and its director Dr. Luigi Festi, this conference will attempt to provide a definition to doping in the mountains and set guidelines that aims to raise awareness and increase safety in high altitude mountaineering.

Planetmountain

October 2014

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2012: the crowd climbing up Everest...

Simone Moro

The first international conference aimed at addressing the problem of doping in high-altitude mountaineering and so-called “mountain” sports will be held tomorrow during the International Mountain Summit at Brixen, South Tyrol, Italy. It's organiser Dr. Luigi Festi introduces this issue in the following incisive and clear manner: "Nowadays we consider the mountains, and especially the highest peaks, as a means to achieve success. So can climbing to the summit of Everest with the use of supplementary oxygen, at times even all the way from Base Camp, be considered doping? Is it dishonest? And if it is, then it's dishonest towards whom and what? And does taking Acetazolamide, without medical supervision and to prevent acute mountain sickness seeing that we want to climb Mont Blanc at the weekend but we're not properly acclimatised, fall into the doping category? And what effects does this have on our bodies? And further still: in some cases reaching the top of an 8000ers results in economic gains, we descend and tell our friends, the local press, hold conferences and are, for a brief instant “famous”. But if to reach the summit we've stuffed ourselves with cortisone, sometimes without the expedition doctor's consent, forcing our bodies to get up there, then we have cheated ourselves or the others? Have we risked our lives even more? And what if we've consumed boxes of painkillers and anti-inflammatory tablets to finish or win a trail competition?

An attempt to answer these, and many more, questions will be made tomorrow at Bressanone during the International Mountain Summit and the conference entitled "Clean and Honest Mountaineering: Reality or Illusion?, organised by the Master in Mountain Medicine and its director Dr. Luigi Festi. While the conference is open to all and translated into three languages, participants include alpinists, representatives of the various alpine clubs, athletes, journalists, anti-doping experts, high altitude medics, officials of various sports clubs, trainers and all other parties involved in this issue.

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