According to listings compiled by The Anti-Doping Database, a subscription-based information resource accessible here, stanozolol last year accounted for 22 athlete suspensions, compared to 15 attributable to methylhexaneamine, the second most common prohibited substance.

The fact that so many athletes continue plainly to resort to stanozolol 26 years after Johnson's highly-publicised fall from grace, having run a blistering 9.79 secs in the Olympic 100m final, might at first glance prompt one to despair about the capacity of anti-doping bodies to stamp out drug abuse in sport, even given today's sophisticated arsenal of counter-measures.

However, the 2014 total of stanozolol-related cases is actually the lowest since 2007, and is far below the year-earlier figure of 132 cases.

Of those 132, 96 were male and nearly 50 were weightlifters or powerlifters; a further 38 were track and field athletes with 25 of these from the single country of Turkey.

Ukrainian heptathlete Liudmyla Blonska tested positive for stanozolol twice in her career. She was stripped of the silver medal she initially won at the Beijing 2008 Olympics for doping ©Getty Images



This was the year in which Turkey faced down a doping crisis, with more than 30 of the country's athletes suspended on a single August day by the Turkish Athletics Federation.

A substance called Dehydrochloromethyltestosterone was responsible for 10 suspensions in 2014, according to the database, as was methandienone.

As many as eight of these methandienone positives - 80 per cent - came from out-of-competition tests.

Among other reasons for cases last year, 14 were said to be down to an athlete's failure to provide whereabouts information.

There were 17 examples of cases linked to a non-disclosed substance.

Among other relatively well-known prohibited substances, eight cases were linked to clenbuterol in 2014, seven to nandrolone, six to erythropoietin (EPO), five to testosterone - of which three involved female athletes - one to human growth hormone and one to ephedrine.

No cases at all were explained by an athlete's elevated testosterone:epitestosterone ratio.

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