How are elites able to dope without being caught (not trolling)?

1. Bolt is dirty but your guess is as good as mine on who's doing what cover-up.

2. Of course there are new drugs that are untestable in any given year, much less Olympic quad. Doping is big money. Especially now that TRT and doping in general is being seen as more and more socially acceptable among Weekend Warrior types. Doping honestly is the fountain of youth, particularly for men, and unless you've agreed to not do it, there's no reason for athletic men 35+ not to do it.

3.. Masking agents are also big money.

4. Corruption is everywhere, but again: your guess is as good as mine for exactly where the corruption is. There are probably pockets of it every place you can imagine, but not every person is corrupt.

5. It's called microdosing and yeah it's a thing. You should watch 'Icarus' on Netflix.

A question you didn't ask: Some "PEDs" are more socially acceptable than others.

Personally I came from a high school program that was notoriously strict about the caffeine rule, to the point that they would dump it and scratch you if they caught you with coffee/tea/soda while at a meet, regardless as to how big that meet was.

As such, I absolutely believe caffeine is a PED, and I 100% believe that athletes shouldn't be allowed to consume it beyond the small amounts in chocolate. But do you see anyone being culturally willing to take away peoples morning coffee or afternoon tea? Absolutely not. Despite the fact that it's a diuretic and thus is 100% a masking agent.

eyeroll2021 wrote:

I think that’s technically true. But how often does that happen? Athletes don’t have to put exactly where they are all the time right? I thought they just had to keep there whereabouts updated for the 1 hour window?

During the 1 hour, they have to be at the exact location they announced. During the rest, they have to be in the vicinity.

If the tester can't find you during the 1 hour, it's counted as a missed test.

If the tester can't find you during the other hours, it's counted as a whereabouts failure (see Coleman's case).

eyeroll2021 wrote:

A lot of athletes seem to fail in-competition or during their regularly scheduled time (like Shelby). I just can’t understand how they fail this way.

They might have expected their neighbor/friend/etc. to ring the doorbell, not a tester.

Or, they might have trust in their doping regime that they would pass that test too.

Or, they might have had already two missed tests, and hope for the best instead of choosing the two year ban.

Last but not least, no it's not 24 hours. Athletes get to sleep uninterrupted - no testing at night. There are articles out there describing how to dose at 11 pm and be "clean" again at 6 am. Depending on how bold the athlete is pushing right to the glowing limits, they risk getting caught with just around the threshold at 6 am (think nandrolone for example, and the current BTC rumors).

notworstyearever wrote:

rekrunner wrote:

Why do you think “most are doping”?

People are running better times than busted dopers from the past. You mean to tell me they suddenly have all this natural clean talent to post better times than busted elites a decade earlier? Not a chance.

Exactly

Thanks, I found the document with the information.

I don’t understand how a ‘missed test’ counts the same as a whereabouts failure.

If you miss your one hour testing window, then you are much more likely to be dodging a test.

But whereabouts failure seem like they can happen pretty easily:

Normally, I’m home at 7PM, but maybe my kids were bugging me to get ice cream. At least a few times in life, I’m going to forgot to update my whereabouts before I take them to get ice cream. If USADA or AIU happens to come at that time I get a whereabouts failure that pretty counts as a missed test?

I always thought Christian Coleman missed his testing window (which I thought vas very dumb of him).. but was his third failure literally just for randomly going Christmas shopping in the evening (not in testing window) like any normal person?

It’s amazing “protect-my-rights-Republicans” aren’t completely up in arms about these rules. Good gosh, I have to click a button on every single website to give them consent for my ‘cookies’, yet people are also forced to tell an agency where they are (and presumably where there family is as well) at literally every point during the day. I don’t personally care about privacy all that much, but people have made a MUCH bigger fuss about way less.

Not quite. You can go Christmas shopping during the rest of the day, but not during the magic one hour, which Coleman did. He had a "Missed Test" on 16 January 2019, a "Filing Failure" on 26 April 2019 (thus backdated to 1 April 2019), and a "Missed Test" on 9 December 2019.

"Filing Failure" stands for the tester couldn't find you in the vicinity of your location outside of your 1 hour, which then gets backdated to the beginning of the quarter (otherwise Coleman would have been banned for Worlds too because of another missed test in 2018).

Yes I just re-read Coleman and saw his last one was an actual missed test.

But you just said if the tester can’t find you in the vicinity outside of 1 hr. window it’s still a filing failure. Which, practically, counts the same as missed test. So even if it’s outside your 1hr window, you can only go Christmas shopping, or out for ice cream, or take your dog for walk, or to your kids t-ball game, if you update that in your whereabouts?

And so it goes.

https://i.stuff.co.nz/sport/olympics/300350379/tokyo-olympics-russian-high-jumper-banned-over-elaborate-doping-deception

Russian high jumper Danil Lysenko was handed a six-year ban on Monday over an elaborate attempt to deceive anti-doping authorities, in a case which showed senior Russian track and field officials colluding to break the rules.

The Court of Arbitration for Sport ruled Lysenko tampered with the anti-doping process and failed to inform anti-doping bodies of his whereabouts.

rekrunner wrote:

Why do you think “most are doping”?

Why do you think the reason for running faster is doping? What other explanations have you considered?

If the OP had said cycling instead of running, would you have responded the same way?

The clear line of demarcation should be between needing the drug to just live a relatively normal life day to day. If you “need” the drug to handle above and beyond intense training. That’s not right and kind of insulting to anyone with a legit condition they just makes a normal life difficult.

objectivety needed wrote:

rekrunner wrote:

Why do you think “most are doping”?

Why do you think the reason for running faster is doping? What other explanations have you considered?

If the OP had said cycling instead of running, would you have responded the same way?

The OP did not say “running” — at least not at first, in the OP.

But I find it an odd question.

You want to know if, under completely different circumstances, with different facts, and for a sport with different physiological demands, whether my response would not be adapted to match the alternate circumstances?

Would you expect me to respond the same, or respond differently, in this different scenario?

Honestly, if the OP had said cycling instead of running, I probably would not have responded at all.

But, assuming for the moment, I have hypothetically become my cycling twin “recycler” and we are at the “World Famous Lets-Cycle” Message Board:

- I might still ask why you think what you do — what would be the independent unbiased basis for the doping prevalence that shows *most* “elite” cyclists are doping.

- I might ask if doping does help cyclists achieve faster times, and the reasons for it, and over time further ask to clarify which dope, and which event, by which mechanism, and under what conditions and for whom, in which initial state of training. I might point you to Hamilton’s book where he says that clean cyclists can win 1-day events. Or point you to two meta-studies on cycling that says, after reviewing the body of decades of scientific research, the benefit of blood doping for cycling has been over-estimated.

- If such a thing existed as “all time” databases and world records for cycling events, I might ask you to consider the evolution of equipment, such as lighter bicycles, aerodynamic helmets, pedal clip technology, etc., as a partial explanation for the faster performances.

eyeroll2021 wrote:

But you just said if the tester can’t find you in the vicinity outside of 1 hr. window it’s still a filing failure. Which, practically, counts the same as missed test. So even if it’s outside your 1hr window, you can only go Christmas shopping, or out for ice cream, or take your dog for walk, or to your kids t-ball game, if you update that in your whereabouts?

No, you don't need to provide such details. The tester will go to either your place or training center (you give your normal training times, e.g. Coleman said 2 - 5:30 pm in Lexington Kentucky, and the 1 hour slot was 7:30 - 8:30). If they can't find you, they call. You can read up on that in Coleman's AIU decision:

Coleman was called at 12:09 pm, but then said he actually was in Iowa. So, filing failure. Had he been shopping, and able to come back within 60 minutes, it wouldn't have been a filing failure.

If however they would have come at 7:40 pm to his home, and he wasn't there, it would be a missed test, no matter whether he was in Iowa, at the neighbor's place, or Christmas shopping within a 10 minute drive.

eyeroll2021 wrote:

Yes I just re-read Coleman and saw his last one was an actual missed test.

But you just said if the tester can’t find you in the vicinity outside of 1 hr. window it’s still a filing failure. Which, practically, counts the same as missed test. So even if it’s outside your 1hr window, you can only go Christmas shopping, or out for ice cream, or take your dog for walk, or to your kids t-ball game, if you update that in your whereabouts?

Rather than relying on a second-hand interpretations, you can find out the requirements in the “ISTI” (link below):

Here is my second-hand interpretation:

At the beginning of each quarter, you are required to fill out accurate whereabouts information for the whole quarter which includes information like when and where you will be living, sleeping, training, and competing, and any routine activities like working out at a gym. When things change, you are required to keep this information accurate as soon as practically possible. This does not include domestic details and non-routine activities like shopping, ice cream, dog-walking or t-ball game. It also doesn’t mean an automatic filing failure if the tester cannot find you outside the 1 hour window. It only becomes a filing failure, when the filed information is not accurate, and it is determined there was sufficient opportunity to update the whereabouts information to be accurate, but the athlete failed to do so. There is some flexibility to adapt to and consider day-to-day life events, but details like repeated abuse and frequent last minute updates are kept and will also be considered in cases of determining whereabouts failures.

rekrunner:

I've been on these boards for years. Absolutely no one thinks cycling is free of PEDs. And yet we have a noticeable blind spot towards our own sport and our favorite athletes, despite trends and evidence that seem inexplicable except for doping.

Someone recently bumped up an old thread from when Lance was king of the cycling world. It was crazy to read how many posters here, presumably Americans, defended Lance as clean and explained away his freakish strength. And Lance stood on the podium of the TDF and regaled the world for not "believing" in him and cycling.

The OP is not off track to presume doping is rampant in running and to ask how runners are avoiding detection.

objectivety needed wrote:

rekrunner:

I've been on these boards for years. Absolutely no one thinks cycling is free of PEDs. And yet we have a noticeable blind spot towards our own sport and our favorite athletes, despite trends and evidence that seem inexplicable except for doping.

Someone recently bumped up an old thread from when Lance was king of the cycling world. It was crazy to read how many posters here, presumably Americans, defended Lance as clean and explained away his freakish strength. And Lance stood on the podium of the TDF and regaled the world for not "believing" in him and cycling.

The OP is not off track to presume doping is rampant in running and to ask how runners are avoiding detection.

I’ve been on these boards for years too.

While it is interesting what people think, I didn’t ask “what” the OP thought, but “why”. I generally find “why” more interesting than “what”, or alternatively, it is only the “why” that can make the “what” interesting.

For example, why would you say “trends and evidence that seem inexplicable except for doping”?

I find the trends easily explained by many non-doping reasons, e.g. high-altitude or new shoes. I don’t always find doping to be a very good explanation for the fastest performances, let alone “inexplicable except for doping”.

The OP said “most”, not “rampant”. Had he said “rampant”, I would not have responded with “why?” “Rampant” is one of these words that could mean 20% or 80%, depending on expectations and perspective, while “most” can only mean something more than 50%. The most pessimistic estimate I’ve seen for “athletics” is the uncorrected survey result of 44%, with lots of discussion and mathematical models about how to adjust that 44% to correct for many possible sources of errors, concluding with a suggestion that they didn’t “over-estimate”. (Don’t be fooled by 57% — the statistic for the 2011 Pan Arab Games, consisting of 27 sports, only one of which is “athletics”, with the participation of 21 Arab nations.) Therefore, the question, why would someone say “most”?

If the OP had asked, why do so many dope while so few are caught — this is a fair question — one which I also answered. But he started this thread with an unnecessary and gratuitous “most are doping”. Why?

objectivety needed wrote:

rekrunner:

I've been on these boards for years. Absolutely no one thinks cycling is free of PEDs. And yet we have a noticeable blind spot towards our own sport and our favorite athletes, despite trends and evidence that seem inexplicable except for doping.

Someone recently bumped up an old thread from when Lance was king of the cycling world. It was crazy to read how many posters here, presumably Americans, defended Lance as clean and explained away his freakish strength. And Lance stood on the podium of the TDF and regaled the world for not "believing" in him and cycling.

The OP is not off track to presume doping is rampant in running and to ask how runners are avoiding detection.

this is the thread about lance - letsrun could talk themselves into believing lance despite all outside evidence and trends saying otherwise

Micro dosing so it'd out of your system before your testing window. Some dopers set 2 alarms, 1 so they can pee incase their urine would trigger a positive test then go back to bed and wake up on the 2 d alarm or when the tester arrives but the "evidence" has already been disposed of. Another is microdosing and making sure it's out of your system when you compete to avoid a positive test because some meets have random tests and tests for athletes that place well or hit certain times.

For dopers, it's a test of intelligence, not a test of guilt.