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

I'll add that I think the current anti-doping spending and strategies are about right (even as I'm philosophically against whereabouts testing as a workers' rights issue, I don't have a better solution). Many dopers are getting caught. It's not too harsh or leaving a bad impression for the hobby joggers. It's a good enough balance. I'd be for more detective type work looking into suppliers though.

My comments, in no particular order:

1) Increase Testing: Nice, but it is hard to see where the money will come from to pay for this without it ultimately being passed on the participants in large marathons or spectators at T&F events. Asking the sponsors to pay for it may just drive the few sponsors away.

2) Backdating Sanctions: Maybe losing awards and prizes earned 12 or 24 months prior to being busted might fly. More than that might trigger a lot of legal issues. Remember athletes who have been retroactively stripped of titles and records (eg, Lance, Ben Johnson) all confessed to earlier doping.

3) Ban country after N positive tests: Countries are large places and individual athletes have little or no control over what other athletes are doing. If the Huntingdon U scandal turns up N athletes who were taking drugs should all US athletes be banned from the 2024 Olympics?

4) Punish the associates: Much better idea. If Coaches, Managers, Agents, Team Doctors etc. were all liable for punishment then a lot of the shady grey area stuff would stop.

5) Ban the Team / Club after N positive tests: Also much better than 3) above. Team members are much more likely to know what's going on within their club. If a club is shady then clean athletes will vote with their feet (eg GBS) rather than stick around and risk a ban.

6) Remove local drug testing authority: Also a good idea. There are way too many cases of the national agency giving their own athletes a mulligan. Instead, if all the funding went to the AIU it could test a lot more athletes and the drug users wouldn't be able to rely on a sympathetic ear when they offer their bizarre explanation of how the drug got into their system.

7) Make TUE's public knowledge. I feel TUEs are a major loop hole for drug use (I believe Serena Williams had six on the go). At present they are covered by patient/doctor confidentiality. That's very convenient if you want to take something suspicious. Also their approval is by the national body (see 6) above), the implications are obvious. If these TUEs had to be publicly declared.

8) Only WADA or AIU can grant TUEs: A follow up from 7) above. The current situation of a national body granting TUEs to their own athletes is an obvious conflict of interest.

9) Hit the supply chain: This worked in cycling where the police went after the suppliers up to and including raiding the teams' hotel rooms. This tends not to happen in T&F. David Jenkins being the exception, but that was back in the 1980s and his operation was supplying up to 70% of the steroids trafficked in the United States.

I don't know how successful any of the above will be. As other posters have pointed out, it is a culture thing. As long as the culture is "you have to do what it takes", "levelling the playing field", "nobody remembers who finished second" then systemic drug taking will remain in the sport. Also, the culture of closing of ranks to protect a convicted doper (eg, Shelby Houlihan) doesn't help.

I like your arguments, Raddison.

I still hope something along the lines of 2) Backdating is possible. If for example Nike only gives out contracts from now on that stipulate that money needs to be returned if banned for doping, that might help.

And of course they should stop hiring drug cheats after their ban. Along these lines, USATF should never hire or continue to employ drug cheat coaches either.

Regarding 9), Operation Aderlass is also a good example. And the FBI getting involved after Blessing's doping ban is encouraging, but they don't seem to care about Shelby. Maybe they would have invoked RADA if one of the Canadians from BTC would have been popped?

I read that the University of Waterloo developed a much faster and
less expensive testing method in 2018. I made the mistake of wading
into the WADA’s laboratory standards page to figure out if they
have implemented this method. I could not determine if it is being
used. Does anyone know if WADA lab standards include the cheaper
testing method? If not then why not?

wejo that's correct, in most circumstances.

USADA tests at most (maybe all?) national championship events on the track and road, even at the masters level. My understanding is that those events are paid by USADA, not USATF or the race organization. However, outside of those championship events, if a race wants to implement drug testing and contracts USADA the testing is expensive and it's risky to be stuck with a mountain of legal fees if an athlete test positive.

USADA is bringing in nearly $23 million in revenue per year, according to their 990 from 2020. Why don't they throw some extra money at this? Track & field/running is the #1 high-risk sport for PED use.

I just checked their 990 for 2019 (non-pandemic year) and they lost $250k so idk where this money would come from. Revenue was $22.5M and expenses $22.75M, with $7M of those expenses going towards sample collection/analysis.

Maybe it could come from the extra $4 million they got in 2021 from the Office of National Drug Control Policy. USADA is a 501c3 organization (doesn't pay taxes) so it's no surpise to see a small "loss" on their financials every year...that's the goal. All of this is public information via their Form 990.

After serving a ban of X years...the drug cheat will not be allowed to use any carbon plated super shoe or carbon plated super spike in competition.

It looks like USADA needed that 40% increase to get back to pre-COVID testing numbers. In 2019 they completed about 7,300 tests with the funding they receive from the US Govt. In 2021, USADA completed about 7,500 tests after only completing about 5,100 tests during COVID in 2020.

I was surprised to see that only about 15% of USADA's testing is done "In-Competition" year over year. Clearly they are much more focused on out of competition testing.

Unfortunately we have to assume guilt, and let you prove your innocence. The sport is just too dirty, and there is just not much disincentive to dope, whether you're a poor Kenyan from a third world country, or any where else, the risk just doesn't outweigh the potential rewards.

I think it comes down to very very very regular testing and reporting. Not just pee, but blood, hair and whatever else it takes. That means testing before competition, testing out of season, and testing post event.

I dislike banning countries, but since the Olympics and WC are based on that I do think it should be in the discussion and on the table. It's just so unfair to the clean athletes of those countries and it just leads to more "mercenary" country hopping of athletes. If you can't compete for X then you'll just change your citizenship to Y so you can compete. (I hate that stuff.)

You hit some great points. Especially about the banning of countries due to doping. What if 10 USA sprinters get popped, but no distance runners? Should all USA T&F be suspended from competition?

Also, there's a big difference between testing + for a stimulant vs an anabolic steroid.

Re: TUEs Again, you can't have a blanket policy, but you should for some TUE's.. if the drug your doctor has prescribed to you has proven to be such a performance enhancer that it would would make competition unfair, then sorry, this sport just isn't for you. Go on your way, be healthy, take that drug... but you aren't going to be a pro T&F athlete, go be a pro something else.

Outside of planting informants or incentivizing collecting positive tests, there is not a bandaid large enough to heal the wounds of doping.

The 90s and 2000s saw nearly unmitigated doping and now we have both mechanical and chemical doping that goes far beyond the reaches of testing. The science of doping will forever outpace the development of new detection systems.

Sure, keep samples to be re-tested when new tech comes around, I'm all for that. But, that only erases results from the record book, not memory and is only evident of those that were caught.

One additional point that I missed:

10) Keep prize money in escrow: This is where the winnings from a race are paid out in installments over a period of years rather than as a lump sum immediately after the race. I think this is very good. It would certainly deter the end of career doping. Currently an athlete in decline may be tempted to dope to get one more pay day. However, if they still have a large sum held in escrow the risk / reward may not be worth it.

Summary: I don't think there is any extra money to throw at the problem, or any realistic source of extra money. So therefore the solution has to be low cost. Hence my preference towards punishing the enablers, removal of nationalistic conflict of interests in testing, much more transparency regarding TUEs and escrow. Whether there is the will to do this, especially amongst national bodies, is another matter.

My solution is simple:

1. First positive test is 6-month ban, starting at the conclusion of any trials & appeals. No competition between positive test and end of adjudication. Vacate any results 6 moths prior to positive test. Return medals and prize money from 6 months prior.

2. Second test - lifetime ban; vacate all professional results. Return medals and prize money from any time between first and second positive test.

There is always going to be wild some wild scenario like "I ate a tainted burrito" or "someone spiked my toothpaste" ... let's say OK you get the benefit of the doubt, but there has to be some type of penalty (6 months). But crazy once in a million scenarios don't happen twice - you're done.

Doesn't seem realistic to me. The prize money is not that much to begin with. Who is going to race for prize money that pays out over 5-10 years?

Every checkbox in a policy needs funding, not only the administration of the policy itself, but also the appeals process. When you starting bringing in associates, teammates, doctors, coaches, federations, every one is going to need their own procedures and appeals process. You're going to need a LOT of funding.

I like wejo's idea about spreading the responsibility for athletes' doping to sponsors. That might help to spur innovation in this area as well as absorb some of the costs associated with anti-doping tools i.e. medical testing.

A couple things I haven't seen mentioned much yet:

-I wonder a lot about the lack of evidence for many of the chemicals included in the WADA banned list. The list is massive...are you telling me that there have been large-scale RCT's that PROVE these substances confer an advantage? No way that kind of research has been done. I think this is important, because we worry about "doping" very very broadly, but I think we need to focus more on violations with substances that are absolutely proven to be performance enhancing. This might also bring down costs of anti-doping protocols i.e. we would only need to track the production/prescription of a handful of substances (potentially) and urine/blood/hair testing could likewise be streamlined to focus on those substances.

-I think this would also move us towards a system that punishes doping on sliding scale depending on the potency of the substance. I think it's insane that someone with THC in their blood (very dubiously performance enhancing) is a violation on par with EPO/steroids.

-This is outside the box and maybe more of a thought experiment buuut...what about a several year total-amnesty on doping coupled with an emphasis on transparency about what exactly athletes are using? Again, I think we don't really know what people are using, at what doses, for how long, etc. While I don't think this idea is totally feasible, it just gets back to my belief that we do not have enough solid evidence on what drugs are really PED's, how long the "enhancement" lasts, does a given substance work for every athlete or just some people. What if a marathon runner uses a short-acting stimulant better suited for a sprinter? Why is that automatically "doping" if the substance is metabolized out of the body in minutes with no biological evidence that is continuing to boost performance over a two-hour race?

...Love the idea for this thread, btw. Thanks!

I think a few things need to happen:

1. One and Done. If caught, your career is over. Including coaching.

2. If caught, ALL of your career to that point is wiped out. Records are rescinded; win/place/show is nullified.

3. If caught, your name goes into a book of cheaters in the sport where your name will live in infamy.

4. ALL athletes MUST carry insurance in the amount of 1.25 Million (or whatever number is determined to be right), where 250K goes to the governing body of the sport for the purpose of running the doping programs (not for bonuses to exec's.), and the remaining 1 Million goes to reimbursing any athletes who were denied rightful monies by any placing in a race you robbed them of otherwise obtaining.

4a. any leftover monies would go to the governing body to run an even more robust doping program

4b. each country's Governing body in the sport must also carry insurance to partially reimburse the offending athlete's insurance company's exposure to loss, and to fund the doping program. This way, each country has skin in the game to ensure they do not knowingly, or through bad practices inadvertently, support quiet doping efforts. (The idea here is that the more a country and its athletes dope, the more cost prohibitive the insurance will be.

4c. Once a threshold of doping violations occur under a country's governing body ( say every 2 doping events, just to create a scenario), the country and the athletes running under that country must carry more insurance with each threshold reached. and it can be that the amount must be doubled with each threshold (again, just to create a scenario). This would become enormously cost prohibitive after a while.

4d. COACHES must also carry insurance. if two doping violations occur under any coach (or whatever number is determined to be fair), their coaching career is over.

4e. The athletes, Countries, and coaches must agree to be personally and collectively liable to the insurance company losses incurred by the insurance company due to their cheating. This will destroy the lives of the participants financially.

5. Each athlete and each country MUST declare their intention of participating in any given season one full year in advance of that season. a testing must occur at that time (to establish a benchmark) and proof of insurance must be shown to be paid in full.

5a. The athlete must agree to weekly testing by the sport's governing body not their country's governing body. Any violations or whereabouts issues nullify the season, meaning the athlete cannot participate in their declared year, AND they are out the money for their insurance because they paid in advance.

6. A list of seasonal violators will be published each year to identify athletes who violated as a means to deter others from future embarrassment if they violate.

7. Of course, all standard means of contesting apparent violations should be allowed to occur. But, once exhausted, the final ruling is final. if considered guilty...your out forever. (See 1,2,3 above)

7a. A full reorganization of the legal rules and governing practices of the sport must be modified in light of the rules laid out here.

Anyway, this is my set of ideas that I think would help.

Cheers, all.

I'm not familiar with what tests are ordered, and if it's the same list of tests for everyone tested or perhaps more targeted, but the bulk of the costs are not lab costs. You have to pay for sending a professional to the location to collect the samples and send the samples off to a lab. That could mean airfare, hotel, etc. Then you need to have a professional read and interpret the results, do a laboratory data quality review, provide a summary, and have the report reviewed, etc. If you are testing a bunch of people at once, sure the proportional cost of paying the personnel vs paying lab costs decreases. I'm very familiar with collecting/testing samples/providing results in a defensible way in a different field having worked in the environmental consulting field.

Thanks. I had hoped the Waterloo testing had advanced the technique to the level they have for outpatient substance abuse clinics (a portable on site all-in-one test that almost anyone can do). This is not the case....YET. As technology advances the tests could be done at the site with the only "mailing" of results being via an app that uploads the results. For the last 2 years my son's Dexcom G6 app for diabetes uploads glucose levels to a website and his endocrinology team can review it. Having something this fast, this cheap, and with instantaneous results could mean a lot more athletes could be tested anywhere, anytime; leaving nowhere to hide.