(Note: Eliot Ness and his FBI officers in 1920s and 1930s Chicago were known as “The Untouchables.” Credit: Scifitwin for the Ness reference in a comment he left at Trust But Verify.)
There are those who believe that the doping problem in sports — all sports — runs rampant. That it’s at epidemic proportions and growing worse. Among them is David Howman, the director general of the World Anti-Doping Agency, who recently told Britain’s The Sunday Telegraph,
If you look at the number of tests conducted on an annual basis and the number of those that test positive, sample collection is scratching the surface.
What’s interesting about such comments is that no actual proof is ever offered of how prevalent the problem is. We’ve all heard stories of athletes, even those in their teens, feeling pressure to use performance enhancing drugs (PEDs) because, “everybody is doing it.” (Of course, this is also a teenager’s stock-in-trade justification for just about anything.) It seems to be part of the conventional wisdom these days. But is it really true?
WADA’s own statistics show that for all the tests they do, across all sports, only about 2 percent of those tests wind up with an adverse analytical finding on the A sample (cycling comes in higher at a fraction under 4 percent). Precisely how many of those A sample findings are verified by subsequent tests on B samples is unknown, as WADA and the national ADAs have not published those statistics up to now. But certainly this puts an upper limit on what the number might be, at least for the types of tests performed.
Granted, there are cheaters who find new drugs (or methods) to use for which there are no tests. But such things cost money, and the unscrupulous people who create such drugs and supply them are driven by a profit motive, so the price for these new, illicit PEDs is often quite high. The suppliers need to maximize their profit before they get busted and can no longer make money on the drug. And they know what they’re doing is illegal, as do the athletes.
The question is just how many of those types of cheaters are out there. The truth is, nobody knows. Catching them is harder, since the doping tests don’t work. The Telegraph’s article talks of a new approach to catching cheats. The good, old-fashioned approach of doing investigative legwork.
As the Telegraph notes, a number of the major scandals have been uncovered in recent years as a result of law enforcement doing research and investigation. And sometimes it’s been a case of stumbling onto a cache of supplies, as happened in the 1998 Festina scandal. Howman is now calling for governments to give their anti-doping agencies the legal ability to carry out drug investigations, or to use their existing investigative agencies for that purpose.
“Sport has got no investigative powers,” [Howman] said. “Sport can’t go out and search bags and look at what’s going on. Sport can’t provide the evidence, but governments can. That’s the tool that we want to specify in what we see as the way forward in the fight against doping.
“Just look at what has happened in the last 10 years. All of the major busts were made through governmental agencies. BALCO was uncovered by the inland revenue, Operation Puerto was the justice department in Spain, Festina [1998 Tour de France] was the police in France, the Chinese swimmers who were caught in Australia in 1998 involved the customs department. What’s common to all these? Governmental agencies.”
Bringing governmental agencies into the fight against doping in sports is not a bad idea, as long as it comes with all the procedural rights and protections that citizens are normally entitled to. Such as not allowing a search and seizure without a warrant, or without probable cause.
While investigating those who supply the drugs is good, it cannot come with a dispensation of their rights under the law. We’ve already seen how well that works. Regardless of the issue, governmental agencies must act within the law. And those accused of crimes must be accorded their rights under the law. To do otherwise begins a slow slide into tyranny.
Putting an end to doping, if that’s possible, will not happen until the suppliers are held to account. And regardless of how good a system develops over time, there will always be those who will find ways of cheating.
The methods may change, but the impulse to cheat will still be there. It is human nature to seek out ways to outperform your competition. And some will find ways that either skate right up to the edge of cheating, or slip over the line.
So don’t kid yourself that bringing law enforcement into the mix will completely solve the problem of doping in sports. It may cut down on the incidence, but the temptation will always be there. And there will always be a few people who will succumb.
What we can hope for, however, is that including law enforcement will succeed in reducing doping to a minor problem that a few spend their nights fretting over, rather than the major annoyance and frustration it’s become for so many.
Here’s my sad, completely random, poorly-connected thoughts. What bothers me most is that each group involved from riders, teams, sponsors and organizations, no one actually addresses the culture that has created and supported the types of in-depth doping programs that have sprung up in the last two decades. They dance around the issue; however they never actually tackle it head on. It’s not just cycling, either. Many of the larger, fiscally viable, sports are still doing the same thing.
Sure, Simpson doped. Even Eddy wasn’t spotless. Those were individuals. But the systems in place these days are complex. A doping athlete isn’t the only person involved in the tainted result. Will the punitive approach help? Sure, with a percentage of athletes who are sitting on that moral rail.
Problem is I think we’re still looking at the failed War on Drugs approach here. Incremental improvements since 1998, not withstanding, I still feel these are myopic approaches that only deal with the drug, the user and supplier without truly combating the reason for doping.
We’ll never be able to eradicate doping, but if we actually address the purpose and motivation for doping. But the whole “just say no,” “he’s not clean because he doesn’t speak out enough,” “Cycle Sport America: Everyone’s Dirty Unless We Say They’re Not” approaches don’t work. Arresting people isn’t working very well.
Put it this way. Diabetes isn’t cured by injecting insulin, though it certainly deals with the main symptom. However, you figure out why the cells that produce insulin are killed, you can cure the disease. So, keeping with the media references here . . . what’s the Cobra approach to doping? If doping is the disease, who’s Sylvester Stallone?
Interesting take on things, Gary. If all we’ve got (or are getting) is a system like the “War on Drugs” we’ve had for the last bazillion years, we’re in trouble. We need something better, that looks at underlying causes and motivations and addresses those appropriately. Doping is never going to completely vanish. Can a way be found to make it less of a problem? That’s the million-dollar question right now, isn’t it? I hope so. I’d rather people debate athletes’ abilities, strategic errors or just plain bad luck during races than people debate whether so-and-so is a doper. Those other debates can be much more informative, instructive about the sport and interesting.
– Rant