Did someone say steroids?

The Belgian bodybuilding championship was not held last week in Vlissingen in the Netherlands. The competition was supposed to start at 14.30 last Sunday but, thirty minutes beforehand, three inspectors from the Flemish Community took their places beside the scale at the event organised by the National Amateur Body Building Association Belgium (NABBA), which is where all participants must register and be weighed. To their amazement, not a single body builder pitched up.

The competition was eventually abandoned thanks to the very sudden and acute shortage of highly-developed muscles. Nobody was available to comment from the NABBA, but the conjecture is strong that every single participant is on steroids.

A former Belgian bodybuilding champion did have something to say after the abandoned event. 'I understand why those guys did it, they would all have tested positive - that is certain,' the man said on Radio 1. 'It's a world that is highly susceptible to doping,' Dr Hans Cooman, who is involved in controlling steroid abuse, confirmed.

The results of the doping tests in 2008 prove that, with anabolic steroids being the most popular. To avoid the checks, bodybuilding championships are often taken abroad to places just over the border, like Vlissingen. But it seems that the they are no longer safe for Flemish inspectors there either.