Mick Hartley

The North Korean women's football team, it will be recalled, performed poorly against the US team in the World Cup because the players had been struck by lightning during the course of a training session some weeks previously. Now five of the players have tested positive for steroids. Sepp Blatter is shocked, and it takes a lot to shock Sepp Blatter.

The reason? It's that pesky lightning again (£):

Fifa’s disciplinary committee will now consider what to do with North Korea, who may even face a ban from future tournaments as a result of the doping. A North Korean delegation has already met the world governing body and blamed their players’ positive results on a bizarre source.

The North Koreans claim that steroids were accidentally taken with traditional Chinese medicines based on musk deer glands to treat players struck by lighting at a training camp on June 8. Blatter said the North Korean FA “wrote to us and they presented their excuses. They said a lightning strike was responsible for this.” The treatment the Koreans claim inadvertently caused their players to test positive involves a hairy, 4cm gland harvested from musk deer native to a large swathe of Asia, from Siberia to North Korea. The gland is cut open to extract a liquid that is said in Chinese medicine to have healing properties.

Sounds plausible to me. It's not as though we had any reason to associate North Korea with drugs.