LetsRun anti-doping challenge #1 - What can the sport do to clean itself up?

Wait?

If an athlete test positive at a race, the race has to pay USADA's legal fees under option #2? I totally see why races wouldn't even bother unless they are huge races.

The more I think about it the solution might be to get Congress to put like $100 million a year into this or more. They spend that much on meaningless bridges and what not.

It should be taken for granted that athletes (and of course their coaches, some ethically dubious physicians, agents etc.) have and will continue to remain one or several steps ahead of drug-testing protocols and the system at large.

With this in mind, I propose increased efforts to identify/investigate the modes by which elite athletes gain access to performance-enhancing drugs.

- the black market/illicit sources

- contacts in the sporting community (coaches, trainers, agents, and fellow athletes - at least from a historical standpoint)

- legitimate channels

This would necessitate systemic changes in the anti-doping apparatus, namely a reallocation of resources to support increased investigative efforts, i.e. domestic federations, WADA, VADA, and/or the AIU (Athlete Integrity Unity) training existing personnel as de facto law enforcement officers; private 'anti-doping detectives' as it were. Given that doping remains an endemic issue in high-performance sport, despite the best efforts of anti-doping officials to utilize emerging technologies and the most rigorous scientific method - biological passport, out-of-competition testing/whereabouts system etc. - it might be prudent to attack the problem from its origin point, in similar vein to America's "War on Drugs": the access points/supply chain/dealers from which athletes procure illicit, ergogenic substances.

Theoretically, a successful system as described would yield higher numbers of 'non-analytical positives', and if organizational resources were to remain constant, presumably we would see fewer 'adverse analytical findings' by way of laboratory analysis. In the absence of a positive test, officials would be forced to rely upon the 'comfortable satisfaction' standard for burden of proof, a relatively low threshold to meet if past non-analytical sanctions are any indication - see for reference, several BALCO offenders, Canadian weightlifters in the fall of 1988, a host of cyclists from the mid-1990s to present. While this pseudo-legal threshold for determining culpability is said to reside somewhere between 'beyond a reasonable doubt' (criminal standard) and 'the weights and balances of probabilities (civil standard), there has been a discernible skew toward in adjudicating these cases. Moreover, the sometimes controversial 'strict liability' standard applied to positive findings - athletes testing positive are presumed guilty in the absence of mitigating or exonerating evidence, and/or evidence of intent - would be accompanied by a parallel and more rigorous system of deterrence pursuant to establishing intent in such cases.

I have a strong suspicion that such a paradigm shift, undertaken in earnest and with adequate resources, would reveal a host of wide-reaching doping conspiracies, criminal drug trafficking, and the illicit practices of several well-established high-performance coaches in the track and field universe. Getting to the 'root of the problem by way of rigorous investigative efforts into the supply chain - i.e. following paper trails, the undercover monitoring of athletes etc. represents THE unexplored frontier in the vast anti-doping landscape.

Edit: by 'legitimate channels' I'm referring to the medical establishment; anti-aging physicians, hormone replacement therapy etc.

I did not say that.

Exactly. Or a clean 13:10 American who wants to be a 12:50 guy, to make it to the Olympics and earn $200,000 instead of $50,000.

From Aden's wiki:

We should treat doping more like organized crime. Doping is a complex violation, often involving drug distributors, middlemen, coaches/agents, doctors, and of course, the athletes themselves. So target it like a criminal organization. For instance,

1) Make deals with athletes to flip. The punishments have to be carefully calibrated to work. Just like in RICO cases, if an athlete gives you enough to bring down a whole doping organization, their punishment should be greatly reduced. Sucks to have a doper get off easy, but it's more than worth the tradeoff.

2) Claw back winnings and sponsorship money. Not always easy to do without the force of law, but the right mechanisms could make a dent here.

3) Harshly punish activities that are accessories to doping. Administering drugs, connecting athletes with suppliers, and transporting drugs should have serious consequences. Even activities that aren't directly doping behavior should be sanctionable if they are often associated or necessary for doping (think Jama Aden).

4) Agents and coaches should have skin in the game; they should be liable if a certain number of their athletes are caught. This may seem unfair if the agent/coach didn't know about the doping, but it's the same thing that happens if you work for a company and your subordinates get caught stealing from the company.

5) Antidoping organizations and races should benefit from catching dopers. It doesn't work to ask a race or country to police itself, spending money only to reap the bad publicity of a positive test. We should do it the opposite way; catch a bunch of dopers, especially if this leads to major busts, and you get more funding. Maybe this stays on the level of the antidoping organization itself, or perhaps it even extends to getting more big meets, funds from World Athletics, etc.

6) On a slightly different note, the biological passport works very well. I'd continue to develop testing in this direction. Antidoping can catch cheats much better if it's focused on deviation from a baseline rather than needing a smoking gun. I think cycling has a rule where if certain blood values are over a certain threshold, it's not enough to be sanctioned, but you can't race today. Do more things like that.

Overall, the right incentive structure is paramount. Doping is not an unsolvable problem, any more than organized crime is an unsolvable problem. What matters most is creating mechanisms to find and sanction the people (usually not athletes) at the center of a doping culture or organization.

This is not really anti-doping but...

Everybody should be allowed to do dope but they don't have to. But if they do then come race day they also have to take a Herculean dosage of psilocybin magic mushrooms to even out the effects and because they really like drugs.

As they stride out into an arena of baying fans to be chased round the track for 12 minutes and 48 seconds by Jakob Ingebrigtsen turning into a fire breathing dragon I feel confident some at least will consider changing their ways.

I know it seems obvious but I can't ever seem to get in front of Seb Coe in order to get it rubber-stamped.

The only way to remove doping from professional running is to eliminate the incentive to dope which ultimately means removing the incentive to win.

The simple method is to eliminate prize money and sponsorships. A return to running being an amateur sport would go a long way. However, this is probably unpalatable to 95% of people participating at the highest level.

In my opinion professional running will be forever plagued by drug cheats for as long as performance enhancing drugs exist (forever), and athletes determination to win for both personal and financial reasons.

Hold half prize winnings in an escrow account for 4-8 years after the race to not be distributed until a certain time period elapses. If the athlete tests positive at any point in that period the prize money would be distributed to the next athletes in line.

Doping also should have the athlete being legally liable under fraud laws. How is doping to increase income any different that falsifying financial information or any other form of illegal business activity that can be legally prosecuted.

USADA already receives plenty from the Federal government. The Office of National Drug Control Policy grant accounted for more than half of USADA's revenue in 2021. $14 Million in 2021, up from $10 Million in 2020. Why did they need a 40% year to year increase ?

There are two, very easy things to do which would have a dramatic effect.

1) stop using the T/E Ratio test for testosterone which is very easy to defeat and make it mandatory to use the GC IRMS test which is 100% effective at catching testosterone abuse. The fact that WADA still allows the T/E Ratio test is a very good indicator of their dedication(or lack thereof) to catching drug cheats.

2) ban TUEs. Period. Alternatively, if WADA is going to allow TUEs then you cannot compete when actively using a TUE. Heck you are sick! Why should you be competing in the first place? BTW, this situation is yet another example of WADA's commitment(or lack thereof) to catch dopers.

A small but easy thing: make drug test information easier for the public to see. Team USA / Olympic Bios should each have a link. Also, the online USADA database is OK but kind of cumbersome. Why not restructure it to be a little more user friendly? There could be the athlete’s name and picture, along with with the date of the last test, and a link to click on to see a list of all the past tests/dates.

Instead of getting a lump sum of cash for prize money, prize money goes into an annuity fund that pays out portions over, say, ten years and then you get the balance or some amount. If you test positive then the payments stop and the balance goes into the hopper to increase other runners' annuities. Punishes the baddies, rewards the good guys. Sort of a 401k plan for athletes.

Test positive and every mark, every race you ever did is cancelled out automatically. Gone, like you never existed.

Also, at the WC and OG have a traveling wall of shame with drug convicts's names and pictures by nation. Make the competitors walk by it as they walk onto the track.

This topic deserves its own blog post but here’s my take.

First of all, the underlying reasons behind doping need to be understood. The motivation is not just an athlete’s desire to improve their performance; there’s much more to it. Every sport is different and the role of performance-enhancing drugs (PEDs) in each of them varies, but their use as a way to exploit athletes is rarely recognized. The past situation in cycling has been distinctly bad, but best illustrates the way PEDs are used by race organizers to exploit athletes. (I can't speak about today's cycling.)

Cyclists (in the TDF, at least) are ridiculously underpaid for the amount of risk they take, the wear and tear to their bodies, and the number of days they are required to compete without any time for recovery. Most professional runners, if they were forced to compete at a high level in 21 marathons over 23 days would likely feel justified in taking PEDs, or any type of illicit substance, just to get through it and try to limit the damage to their bodies. Obviously, the owners of the tour will be very resistant to the idea of changing the schedule to say, 42 days with alternating rest days, because the cost of hosting the event would double, and certainly don't want to be paying the riders more.

So how does one keep the pro cyclists from organizing into a union, or becoming stars with real power in the organization who will demand better conditions and more compensation? If you are the organizer, you tacitly encourage them to engage in some sort of illicit behavior that has the power to end their careers if publicized. The beauty of this arrangement (from the organizer’s perspective) is that the athlete doesn’t even realize they are being manipulated. They just think they’re cheating and blame themselves.

This tactic is not unique to sports, of course; the same power dynamic is played out in countless other areas as well, such as in work relationships, cults, incestuos families, and Epstein’s circle of compromised politicians. Youth gangs create group cohesion in similar ways. It’s not just the social capital that is built through violent initiation rites such as ‘jumping in’ (described in “Social Rituals of Pain: The Socio-Symbolic Meaning of Violence in Gang Initiations”), but the shared knowledge of incriminating information that binds the members of the group. To put it plainly, if I commit a crime that someone knows about, it creates a power asymmetry since the person can report me to an authority at any time. But if we commit the crime together, there is symmetry and I know that my co-conspirator will likely not snitch since they too potentially face the same consequences.

All this is to say that doping together on US Postal was the means through which silence for Lance and the other riders was obtained. It wasn’t just something that riders did for a competitive edge; rather it was the prerequisite lynchpin for being a member of the team. And it was done with the tacit approval of the organizers, since it allowed them to control the riders. The ironic thing is it would work even if the PED yielded no performance benefits, as long as it was illicit. Lance was not convicted for doping because he was careless. It was because he had acquired too much power and had, frankly, become a tiresome jerk, and the organizers wished no longer to protect him. Recall that the owner of the newspaper which outed him was the same party which owns the TDF.

A similar dynamic can be seen in the NBA. 80 games a season is too many to play in a healthy way, but is allowed to continue because it is just this enormous source of income for the league. It is understood that ticket sales are largely driven by the personalities on the team. If they don’t play, or if they only last a couple years before getting injured, it’s bad for business. So they pay the players large sums of money, and when they get injured or feel the need to “bulk up”, the league looks the other way with lax testing requirements negotiated by the union. The drugs aren’t just about obtaining a competitive edge, it’s about the players’ perceived survival in an exploitative situation. When I look at the long-term Kawhi situation, I see a dispute over which course of treatment was best and who got to decide. Maybe he didn’t want to risk his health with an aggressive use of PEDs, or maybe it was the other way around, but what you will have noticed is that no one can talk about it. The NFL, well.. they have issues, too.

The running world is a bit different because there is so little money at stake and because athletes largely compete and train as individuals. Yes, there are clubs, some of which seem a little shady, but the number of races a pro does per year is minuscule compared to other sports. Nevertheless, doping can still be used as a form of control by a coach (eg. Huntington U.) or similar authority figure, as well as a way to increase performance, or at least inspire the athlete with a placebo if the PED is not actually all that efficacious (eg. Triamcinolone Acetonide).

This is why I find all this shaming of athletes “caught doping” to be distasteful. More often than not, they’re caught up in something beyond their control or in desperate circumstances. So, what to do about it, particularly in running? On this point, I agree with Kara Goucher:

There needs to be a complete paradigm shift in how doping is regulated, in which punishment and shaming of athletes is eliminated and a grand bargain is instead implemented. It would provide that in return for their full cooperation in monitoring and catching the enablers of doping, athletes would receive as much immunity and as few negative consequences as possible if they test positive for a PED. Instead of acting immediately on a positive test, the testing authorities should launch discrete and comprehensive investigations to find the original source of such substances and all the people affected by them, particularly the enablers, even if it means allowing a few dopers to temporarily slip by with medals and prize money. Young athletes need to be taught very early on to recognize the warning signs of a cheating coach, and know how to reach the anti-doping authorities discretely, without fear of punishment. In addition, WADA should be testing every supplement and vitamin source around the world and working with food manufacturers to learn just how prevalent such substances are in their products.

Secondly, elite athletes should be taking and storing urine samples on a *daily* basis, and providing them in bulk to testing authorities periodically, who can then go back and further test their samples when something illicit shows up. To aid in this effort, pro athletes would take a daily (or weekly?) harmless pill containing a date-calibrated marker substance that will allow the testers to verify the samples were in fact taken from that individual at that particular time.

In my opinion, there may also be a place for transparent athletic competition in which the use of drugs by athletes to test their efficacy, safety, and performance is allowed, such that a robust clinical understanding of the drugs in healthy individuals could be gained and applied to those unhealthy individuals who really need them. And it would be great to finally measure PED performance gains in controlled settings on competing athletes. There would surely be surprises and breakthroughs.

However, even with the steps mentioned above, there is a problem. No matter how rigorous and advanced the testing procedures are, they will never be a match for a nation-state committed to circumventing them. This can happen not just through technical mastery (eg. testing and replicating marker substances), but through corruption of individuals and institutions, and as long as significant political power can be gained from a nation’s athletic success there will be ample motivation for government entities to help them cheat. Thus, in my reluctant opinion, the Olympics should be banned, which have been the handmaiden of authoritarian governments everywhere, and international competitions should be limited to single sport championships in order to reduce the temptation of governments to affect the outcomes by exploiting athletes.

I think this is the typical case where we try to find a solution without involving the concerned parties. I think someone should interview known dopers, f.ex Shelby H. and ask her what made her take drugs and what would have stopped her. Higher risk of getting caught (more tests), better ethics (mandatory ethics and philosophy of sports course?), higher punishment (never get to attend a team training again?) etc. The answer is possibly a combination.

Incentivise the ADA's.

The NADO's in their current guise are barely fit for purpose with no targets to meet, little apparent appetite to bust those at the top of the tree, and a fear of expensive lawyer-driven appeals.

Privatised operations like VADA are fresher and more motivated.

Over my career as a lawyer, I've done a fair amount of compliance and internal investigation work. One thing I've learned is that it is essential to have a culture of compliance - where everyone understands and knows the rules and understands that those rules are not just abstract concepts but apply to them personally.

We don't have that in running. Rather, we have this weird model where everyone from the slowest and newest of us and the world class elites compete in the same competition, and where it's never exactly clear who is or should be subject to the rules and who isn't. I have spoken to some very accomplished and fast runners who are completely ignorant of what is and is not allowed. Because they somehow think that those rules don't apply to them.

When people think that the rules apply only to some groups and not others, from there it's an easy leap to rationalizing that one belongs in the group NOT subject to the rules. Even if one is at the OTQ level. Combine that rationalization with a) availability of PEDs and b) incentive (which is not just prize money but also ego) and you get to where we are today..

This is why drug testing at ALL levels is so important - because compliance at any level drives compliance at the other levels.

At the same time, I really can't justify enforcing the doping rules against the 6 hour marathoner who needs to take Sudafed for his allergies on race morning and just wants to finish the race and get his medal. Or the former runner who now has to take supplemental testosterone, is not eligible for a TUE, and just wants to be able to run a race for the joy of it and doesn't care if they place. And we don't want to discourage those runners, because they support the sport for the rest of us.

What I would like to see is:
a) a checkbox on every race form, where one identifies as either a competitor or a participant. If you check competitor, then (regardless of your level of performance) you are eligible for age group awards or overall awards, but also subject to all the rules - drug testing, running without headphones, no outside assistance. If you check participant, then you are not eligible for any awards, but also not subject to testing. Then...

b) random testing at ALL levels of those who have checked "competitor" combined with a big focus on education regarding anti-doping (USADA is already doing some good work here. It's not a waste of resources to catch the doping 3:30 marathoner who is competitive in the women's 60-64 age group. Because compliance at one level drives compliance at all the other levels.

AIU should do a quarterly survey of "who should be drug tested more?" to the fans globally.

Once we know the top three, AIU then starts a crowed funding from the fans and use the money collected to seriously test those three in the coming years.