Misleading and deliberately inflammatory figures in quote of the day

Anti-doping is expensive, and Jamaica is a poor country

Thanks GenericID. Perhaps I should have said relatively poor.

It's ranked 114th in the world by GDP, and it's being compared to four countries in the top 10 (US, China, India, Russia) that provide substantial state support for sports.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_

(nominal)

It's also ranked 99th (in the world bottom half) by GDP per capita.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_

(PPP)_per_capita

Why would you use the population of a Country? You should use the population of ELITE ATHLETES in each Country. I could care less if the cab driver is doping.

Fully agree. First thing I thought when I read that quote of the day. Completely pointless comparing numbers of tests in the US vs Jamaica. Disgraceful and deliberate misuse of statistcs. Surprised Letsrun didn't comment on the point.

Although I don't think comparing to population is accurate either. Comparing to number of athletes would be more appropriate (obviously not easy to get those numbers though).

Valid.

If someone can get me those numbers (for Jamaica, US, China, Russia, etc), I'll do the stats. However, it's much harder to figure that out compared to overall population, so I've had to use these as an approximate measure (given I'm in work and posting on letsrun isn't my job ;) ).

While it's by no means perfect, you'll surely agree it's a lot better than bleating "CHINA and the US do more doping tests than a tiny country in the Caribbean".

Jamaica's athletic talent pool is very concentrated in one specific sport i.e. sprinting. Countries like the US have world class athletes in a huge range of events and different sports. I imagine the athlete pool in the US is similarly larger than Jamaica's when compared to the difference in population. It would be great to know the exact athlete numbers for sure.

Sair wrote:

Thanks GenericID. Perhaps I should have said relatively poor.

It's ranked 114th in the world by GDP, and it's being compared to four countries in the top 10 (US, China, India, Russia) that provide substantial state support for sports.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_

(nominal)

It's also ranked 99th (in the world bottom half) by GDP per capita.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_

(PPP)_per_capita

Depending on what list you use you realize China is either poorer or just as poor as Jamaica using the PPP measure right?

That's also true. Much of the chinese population is very poor.

But in reality we're still talking about countries that pump money into their state-sponsored elite sports programmes, regardless of the wealth of the general population.

According to The Guardian (http://www.theguardian.com/sport/datablog/2012/jul/27/london-olympic-athletes-full-list), Jamaica sent 50 participants (47 in Athletics) to London 2012, while China sent 379 (53 Athletics), and the US sent 534 (125 Athletics). The total number of athletes would be under the control of the USADA or its equivalent in other countries.

Hope that helps. There are lists of the international athletes testing pools available somewhere, but I can't put my hand on it right now.

BTW, the relative importance of the sport to the country's economy might be a good measure of the amount of money that should be invested in keeping its participants legal (and therefore the number of tests that could or should be performed on those participants) might be something to look at?

First of all, you are being a tiny bit mis leading as well. There were two paragraphs in that quote. Malta? Iran?

What about if you did the stats for all the countries in the quote based on tests per medal won in major competition over the last 10 years.

That's useful. However, Jamaica seems to be disproportionately represented in athletics in elite sporting terms.

Does anyone know what sports the various doping agencies mentioned have jurisdiction over? I.e. it makes a difference if US/Russia/China's anti-doping agency is just for olympic athletics, or for total sports (to make sure we're comparing like with like).

For our purposes, figuring out how often elite athletics sportspeople get tested is of the most interest.

If they are a WADA affiliate (and they have to be to be IOC-compliant) then they have jurisdiction over ALL Olympic sports.

Honestly VF, I just went through the ones in the first paragraph as I was doing this on my coffee break.

Malta's an outlier in this list. Tiny population (~500,000, lots of testing). Iran pop 75 million, >25x that of Jamaica, oil-rich. I don't have time to look at the others right now, but I can come back to it after work if there's enough interest. Thanks!

GenericID wrote:

According to The Guardian (http://www.theguardian.com/sport/datablog/2012/jul/27/london-olympic-athletes-full-list), Jamaica sent 50 participants (47 in Athletics) to London 2012, while China sent 379 (53 Athletics), and the US sent 534 (125 Athletics).?

Based on those numbers, The US is certainly under tested.

I'm pretty sure the USADA numbers do not include NCAA and university level testing. Plenty of US athletes and foreign athletes competing at US universities are also getting tested.

Stats 101 wrote:

GenericID wrote:

According to The Guardian (http://www.theguardian.com/sport/datablog/2012/jul/27/london-olympic-athletes-full-list), Jamaica sent 50 participants (47 in Athletics) to London 2012, while China sent 379 (53 Athletics), and the US sent 534 (125 Athletics).?

Based on those numbers, The US is certainly under tested.

Not necessarily. I don't know the numbers, but did the US do at least two-and-a-half times more testing of T and F athletes??? (47 elites for Jamaica and 125 elites for the US.). That's the measure I'm most interested in to keep parity.

The Jamaicans and Kenyans are doping. Don't fool yourselves. It's the reason for their dominance. There is no genetic reason such small countries should be dominating. The gene pool in the U.S. is one the most diverse in the world. The number of people in China, Russia, and the US alone means they should be dominating. I don't want to hear any crap about genetics, growing up in the mountains, and all that. It's PED's plain and simple. They know it, their competition knows it, and we amateurs know it. They just haven't been fully caught yet. The day is coming. Stats never lie, and the stats are pointing their finger of truth at these countries and are saying "too much of an anomaly here."

The number of tested Ice Hockey players in Jamaica is even lower...

I do think some people are confused by these numbers. The 4000+ tests performed by the US were not just on track athletes - this includes cycling, archery, badminton, handball, equestrian, yachting, and whatever else falls under the WADA umbrella.

I don't know much about Jamaica's sporting culture, but I don't think they even have athletes in a lot of the sports that the US fields full Olympic teams in. They don't even have a full track team as far as I can tell. Couple that with the fact that, as mentioned above, their population is less than 1/100th that of the US, and it's quite possible that their sprinters were tested as much or more than US sprinters.

As I mentioned in a different thread, the US has roughly 15 times the population of Australia, but Australia conducted 25-30% more tests. That means an Australian athlete is probably close to 20 times more likely to be tested by their national body than a US athlete.

Sounds like sour grapes by this Alan Abrahamson guy. Boohoo, US sprinters are getting beaten by somebody. That can't be right! Those guys must be cheating! And we would never cheat! USA is #1 by the grace of God!!

Personally, I don't necessarily think Jamaican sprinters are any cleaner or dirtier than US sprinters. I just think that article is jingoistic and unfair.