I don't want to criticise the Norwegian team at all. They have been very straight and correct about that whole Salbutamol affair. But Salbutamol does have an anabolic effect. Sundby wasn't banned for using it, he was banned for overusing it (and FIS even didn't want to accept the ban). And this is where it's getting complicated. Norway's own federation even looked into it, didn't see anything against the rules but said that they were not satisfied either, because of the accessibility of the medication.
The whole thing with the case was that Norway started using a different inhaler where you put a much bigger dose in the inhaler, but the measured amount that gets inhaled into the body is only 10-15% or something along those lines. Normally one shouldn't have gone over the limit. I can't remember exactly, but I think I read altitude could have an effect, but I might be remembering wrong.
Anyway, the whole "argument" was that CAS and FIS/NSF disagreed with what the rules specifically said, and then CAS said they agreed that the rule wasn't specific enough. Thus the suspension was much more minor because of this, the TUE and what the NSF understood to be allowed. I might not be exactly on point here, but it was something along those lines. Point is, there wasn't intent to cheat, but they were still over the limit.
Yeah, the rumor was that NSF and the national team staff started treating athletes way to easy without really doing some proper testing. Almost like "kjærringråd" which is like treating on "old woman's advice"...you know it's not the normal, but experience and prior history shows that this works. So healthy athletes (like not with asthma) when they got irritations etc. the staff were sloppy with some medicine not really used for that type of treatment, thus making it a case.
Still, from what has come out, it doesn't seem they broke rules, but used medicine either unnecessary or using the "wrong" medicine a bit to easy in cases not needed and where other methods could have been used.
