Winehole23
08-06-2016, 10:40 AM
In late July, IOC officials announced that 45 athletes from the London and Beijing Olympics—including 23 medalists from the latter—had failed drug tests after their stored urine and blood samples had been reanalyzed using newer techniques, bringing the total number of retroactive doping busts from both events to 98. That's almost 100 athletes who competed at the Games knowing their samples would be retested in the future and doped anyway.
And why not? The odds are decidedly in their favor. In 2012, WADA-accredited laboratories worldwide conducted approximately 270,000 doping tests (http://perma.cc/6Q3S-2FX7); just over one percent revealed the use of banned substances. Testing done by the London and Beijing Olympics (http://harvardjsel.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/05/Milot.pdf), MLB (http://espn.go.com/mlb/story/_/id/15475310/number-major-league-baseball-drug-tests-increasing-year-year), the NCAA (http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/06/sports/drug-testing-company-tied-to-ncaa-draws-criticism.html?ref=sports&_r=0), and high school sports officials in New Jersey (http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/06/sports/drug-tests-for-high-school-athletes-fuel-debate.html) and Texas (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/beat-steroid-tests-don-hooton_us_562ff93ae4b0c66bae5a04d1?ir=Sports§ion=sports&utm_hp_ref=sports) reveal a similar rate of positives. Nobody believes the true incidence of sports doping is anywhere near that low. A 2013 WADA study (http://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/23/sports/research-finds-wide-doping-study-withheld.html?_r=0) that anonymously surveyed more than 2,000 track and field athletes found that an estimated 29 percent of participants at the 2011 world championships and 45 percent of participants at the Pan-Arab Games had doped during the previous year. A 2015 study published in Sports Medicine (http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs40279-014-0247-x) estimated that as many as 39 percent of elite international athletes used PEDs. One witness interviewed for a Cycling Independent Reform Commission report released last year claimed that 90 percent of cyclists (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/sport/othersports/cycling/11458133/Cycling-doping-report-Drug-taking-remains-widespread.html) use drugs, despite some of the toughest testing in sports.
"Low rates of positive tests look good," says Lisa Milot, a former high-level junior cyclist and University of Georgia law school professor who studies sports and the human body. "But when you look behind the numbers, it's highly unsuccessful." Milot ticks off a list of high-profile doping scandals: BALCO; the Biogenesis case involving Rodriguez; the Tour de France in the late 1990s; Armstrong's fall; credible allegations (http://www.propublica.org/article/former-team-members-accuse-coach-alberto-salazar-of-breaking-drug-rules) that American distance running coach Alberto Salazar is doping his athletes; the current Russian affair. What do they have in common? Each was exposed by a whistleblower, law enforcement, investigative reporting, or some combination of the three.
"None of those are testing results," Milot says. "They are things that show our testing regime has failed."
A former professional cyclist who spoke to VICE Sports on the condition of anonymity is more blunt. "If you look at [USADA's] overall success rate, they are astoundingly ineffective," the cyclist says. "They spend more than $10 million a year, millions of that coming from the [federal] government, and they are fucking useless."
https://sports.vice.com/en_us/article/the-drugs-won-the-case-for-ending-the-sports-war-on-doping
And why not? The odds are decidedly in their favor. In 2012, WADA-accredited laboratories worldwide conducted approximately 270,000 doping tests (http://perma.cc/6Q3S-2FX7); just over one percent revealed the use of banned substances. Testing done by the London and Beijing Olympics (http://harvardjsel.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/05/Milot.pdf), MLB (http://espn.go.com/mlb/story/_/id/15475310/number-major-league-baseball-drug-tests-increasing-year-year), the NCAA (http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/06/sports/drug-testing-company-tied-to-ncaa-draws-criticism.html?ref=sports&_r=0), and high school sports officials in New Jersey (http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/06/sports/drug-tests-for-high-school-athletes-fuel-debate.html) and Texas (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/beat-steroid-tests-don-hooton_us_562ff93ae4b0c66bae5a04d1?ir=Sports§ion=sports&utm_hp_ref=sports) reveal a similar rate of positives. Nobody believes the true incidence of sports doping is anywhere near that low. A 2013 WADA study (http://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/23/sports/research-finds-wide-doping-study-withheld.html?_r=0) that anonymously surveyed more than 2,000 track and field athletes found that an estimated 29 percent of participants at the 2011 world championships and 45 percent of participants at the Pan-Arab Games had doped during the previous year. A 2015 study published in Sports Medicine (http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs40279-014-0247-x) estimated that as many as 39 percent of elite international athletes used PEDs. One witness interviewed for a Cycling Independent Reform Commission report released last year claimed that 90 percent of cyclists (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/sport/othersports/cycling/11458133/Cycling-doping-report-Drug-taking-remains-widespread.html) use drugs, despite some of the toughest testing in sports.
"Low rates of positive tests look good," says Lisa Milot, a former high-level junior cyclist and University of Georgia law school professor who studies sports and the human body. "But when you look behind the numbers, it's highly unsuccessful." Milot ticks off a list of high-profile doping scandals: BALCO; the Biogenesis case involving Rodriguez; the Tour de France in the late 1990s; Armstrong's fall; credible allegations (http://www.propublica.org/article/former-team-members-accuse-coach-alberto-salazar-of-breaking-drug-rules) that American distance running coach Alberto Salazar is doping his athletes; the current Russian affair. What do they have in common? Each was exposed by a whistleblower, law enforcement, investigative reporting, or some combination of the three.
"None of those are testing results," Milot says. "They are things that show our testing regime has failed."
A former professional cyclist who spoke to VICE Sports on the condition of anonymity is more blunt. "If you look at [USADA's] overall success rate, they are astoundingly ineffective," the cyclist says. "They spend more than $10 million a year, millions of that coming from the [federal] government, and they are fucking useless."
https://sports.vice.com/en_us/article/the-drugs-won-the-case-for-ending-the-sports-war-on-doping