Interesting NYT article "Track Keeps Banning Drug Cheats. It Worries That Other Sports Are Not."

“The A.I.U. has cited a run of recent cases — a sprinter from Suriname, a pole-vaulter from Brazil, a Kenyan distance runner — as proof that its targeted approach was succeeding”

So Asinga was specifically targeted. Rightfully so - 10.4 to 9.8 lol. Not even trying to hide it. I widh they’d target Hull as well. If she’s clean it’s just an inconvenience

Would not be surprised at all if Hull is on their list and I think it's safe to say that Sedjati is #1 based on their criteria.

Should be, 100%. progression, the sheer times, and Algeria. And the way he finished

"...It Worries That Other Sports Are Not."

This frustrates me to no end. It seems these days that the only ways for track to get in the NY times are doping cases and culture war stuff.

Yet, we are one of the only sports that takes antidoping seriously! It's good to see the second half of that headline, but it's still true that the article is about doping positives and not, say, how stacked the women's 5k is. The point of cleaning up the sport is so that we can enjoy the resulting competition.

Non-Olympic sports clearly don't care about doping (I'd go so far to say they tacitly endorse it). Even among other Olympic sports, does any other sport aside from cycling try as hard to catch its dopers as track does?

Now, we want to catch dopers, and perhaps one reason we are fans of this sport over others is that we want a sport that tries to be believable. I would never support laxer doping controls; in fact, they should be more stringent. But for pure instrumentalism, it seems the "most effective" approach is to create a sham anti-doping system that doesn't threaten to catch anyone, the doping carries on behind the scenes, and since no one gets caught there will be no negative headlines and people can ignore the problem.

+1

That's also how they nabbed Coleman and Houlihan.

Yes. Kind of like the IAAF under Diack, with a few success catches thrown in to pretend one cares.

The reality is that a lot of these Olympic sports don’t test at all because it is not in the budget (especially women’s sports). Athletics, cycling and swimming do a decent job of testing. Other sports (like NBA basketball and NFL football) almost never test and try to remain willfully ignorant.

Still haven’t caught a single Jamaican in 16 years though. Makes you wonder what is different about that situation.

I think there is a general naïve view from fans in major sports that "doping doesn't matter." I remember some high ranking either FIFA or UEFA official came out and said that doping wasn't a big deal in soccer because no drug can score a goal. That's a lazy paraphrase but I think it summarizes how most other sports feel about doping and they just ignore it. I know that as a track fan, I have become highly suspicious of a lot of major athletes and now generally believe that doping is just part of life in major sports. It has cropped up occasionally, though, as I saw a roundtable discussion of old England soccer players (Roy Keane, Rio, and Gary Neville) talking about playing Italian teams in the 90s and feeling that they were destroyed after and the other team could've gone all day. I don't think there's been much of an effort to change and major American sports it's got to be even worse.

There was even that whole fiasco in UFC where Conor McGregor had to delay his comeback fight because he had to be in the USADA testing pool for so many months, all while he just packed on pure muscle outside the testing pool. It was a total joke that he essentially got to use his "recovery time" to get these insane gains, with the understanding being that he just gets off the sauce at the right time to check the USADA boxes. UFC's response was then to part ways with USADA entirely (though as I understand I don't think this was solely based on Conor returning but still underlines how much they really care about testing). And I feel like MMA the topic of doping is a lot more talked about, whereas in football and basketball it's basically a non-conversation with the people I know. I do think if the basic sports fan knew a little more about "how the sausage was made" it would turn people off to see just how much pharmacology is involved in producing the performances most attribute to hard work and a few paper cups of Gatorade.

Yeah, I think doping really just matters more in a very simple and basic sport like running. It's all about crossing the finish line first and doping will make you faster and have better endurance. With other sports like soccer, baseball, swimming, etc. there's a skill component that just isn't there in running. So although doping is still a benefit, there are lot of other things that matter as much as just being strong and/or fast.

That’s quite untrue. A lot of the busts have been for minor substances (Asafa et al) but they got Ronald Levy, Christopher Taylor and more recently. Nesta Carter and Steve Mullings before that.

A technical component, like with hurdling, or the ‘running events’ that also have a technical side like pole vault or the throws?

LOL, Taylor, poor guy - he might have remembered that Rollins' refusal to leave the airport was only considered a missed test, not a refusal. But then, it was AIU in his case, not the forgiving USADA as for Rollins some 7 years ago.

runningmagazine.ca

World championship silver medallist suspended for evading doping test - Canadian Running Magazine

https://www.facebook.com/marley.dickinson

When anti-doping officials turned up to his house to conduct a test, Taylor was at the airport; as a result, he may be facing a four-year ban

Link:runningmagazine.ca/sections/runs-races...

Sports lawyer Paul Greene, who has previously represented high-profile athletes, Shelby Houlihan and Peter Bol, has been representing Taylor. In the interview with the Jamaica Observer, Greene says that upon discovering that Taylor was at the airport, the doping control officer tracked him down, but Taylor refused to test because he didn’t want to miss his flight. Taylor assumed this would simply count as one of an allowable three whereabouts violations, and Greene claims Taylor would have consented to the test if he’d known his behaviour would be interpreted as an attempt to avoid being tested.

Coleman was a whereabouts violation. He went to Wal-Mart and Chipotle during the hour he was supposed to be home and available to testers. That's failing to manage your time well, which is not smart, but it's also not doping.

It's a doping violation. So it isn't just time mismanagement.

And it was targeted because of Coleman's history of "missing" tests, like 3 within 15 months.

Track and cycling are the sports with the best doping controls that catch the most offenders.

Football (soccer) is surely the worst. Eufemiani Fuentes used to work for Barca and Pep Guardiola was banned as a player in Italy for taking nandrolone. Those Pep Barca teams might have been among the dirtiest in the history of sports.

Not true - they were just covered up.

I did not know that about Barca employing known dopers but not surprising. In my previous post, I was actually thinking of Real Madrid players, particularly Luka Modric, as he's been pointed out as having an "incredible engine" despite being in his late 30s! Again, it seems like it's pretty widespread and unchecked among most clubs but Barca should be least surprising after thinking about it. One of the conditions they signed Messi on was that he could keep taking his HGH (although that was medical at the time).