UCI Announces New Anti-Doping Program

“The UCI Pro-Tour has suffered last year from several doping cases,” the document read.

“The Operacion Puerto and Landis cases have led to the press concentrating more on doping cases than on the sport itself.

“These doping cases, in particular those affecting the sport’s elite, have hurt the public’s trust in the sport and the sport’s credibility.

Before getting into the limited details available, let’s consider exactly why the press has been focusing attention on both the Landis case and Operacion Puerto. In part, it’s because of the unusual nature of each. Operacion Puerto has yet to produce a conviction, and for the most part seems to be a bungled investigation. Numerous riders’ reputations have been damaged or ruined, and several — including Jan Ullrich — have been run out of the sport without any evidence of wrong-doing or any actual anti-doping violations being found, much less upheld, by any official body.

In the Landis case, as has been said numerous times, many violations of protocol occurred in the leaking of information about the case to the press, and the leaders of WADA, the UCI, the ASO and other organizations have been quite vocal in their criticism of Landis for his alleged infraction. So let’s be honest here: A large part of the blame for “hurting the public’s trust” falls on the shoulders of people like Pat McQuaid, who heads the UCI; Dick Pound, who heads WADA; and Christian Prudhomme, of the ASO. Throw in others like Patrick Lefevere and John Lelangue, and you’ve got a fine bunch of nattering nabobs of negativism.

One of the biggest parts of each scandal is the scandalous behavior of those who are supposed to be running the sport and the anti-doping efforts. Nobody escapes unscathed from these. But the ones who suffer the most are the riders whose lives and reputations have been ruined by an anti-doping process run amok.

Now, on to the scant details of the UCI’s program. According to the Reuters story:

All the riders will now face having their urine tested without notice during training or even rest periods. Those tests will be aimed notably at detecting the blood-boosting drug erythropoietin (EPO).

There will also random blood tests designed to track down blood manipulation, such as transfusions. A blood profile will be established for every rider.

Interesting. At the very least, this program appears to be focusing on the kinds of doping that might actually give a rider an advantage over his competitors. But no other details are given, so we don’t know what else the program will be screening for. The blood profile part sounds very similar to the biological profile that Team Slipstream (powered by Chipotle) and the ACE have put together. It would be interesting to find out whether the ACE has been involved in any of the discussions with the UCI over the program’s structure.

Where things really begin to get intriguiging is here:

The riders must contribute to the development of new anti-doping tests and sign a document authorising DNA tests to help identify them when banned substances are found.All teams will have to sign a code establishing tougher sanctions in case of doping offences.

A surveillance committee, whose members will be neither riders nor team officials, will supervise the way the programme is enforced.

What it’s not saying is that the riders are voluntarily participating in the program. They are being required to contribute to the cost, and they are required to sign a document allowing DNA testing.

Further, sanctions are getting tougher. But what we don’t see is how much tougher, or what process will be in place for an athlete to contest an alleged positive finding. No system is infallible, and how well the system is constructed to deal with unusual cases is a good indication of its overall fairness.

Lastly, the part about the surveillance committee. It says neither the riders nor the teams will be on the committee. But it doesn’t say who will. For example, will it be people entirely outside of the sport, or will it be composed of bureaucrats from the UCI? Will it include officials from the various anti-doping agencies? Or from the IOC and/or national Olympic Committees?

Update

Over at Trust But Verify you can find a description of the new program, and you can also view a description straight from the UCI’s web site. What is evident from the information the UCI has released is that this program will:

• Apply to all ProTour riders
• Consist of blood tests for all riders, both in and out of competition, and those blood tests will cover EPO and other banned substances
• Have both in-competition and unannounced out-of-competition tests, and further, riders in countries where unannounced out-of-competition tests are not currently performed will be especially targeted by this regime
• Create an individual profile for each rider, which will include steroid profiles (via urine samples) for “selected riders,” and a database of profile information will be set up in cooperation with WADA and the national anti-doping agencies

And here is where it gets even more interesting. All riders will be required to participate in anti-doping research every year, and “[e]ach year, the most relevant research will be selected for rider’s participation.”

The document also talks about all riders being required to provide DNA samples, if asked. And it goes on to say that the same code of conduct will apply to all riders.

Now, all of the bullet points in the UCI document sound well and good, but while it is long on generalities, it is short on specifics. The questions that still remain are: Who will be performing the testing? What happens if a rider tests positive? What process will riders be subject to if a positive result — or an alleged positive result — comes back from any test?

Only when everything comes out into the open will we be able to judge whether this is an improvement to the system, the beginning of a new, competing anti-doping system, or a hastily slapped together program designed to look tough (and perhaps be tough), but without any of the checks and balances a fair program needs in order to protect those accused who may truly be innocent.

At first glance, I don’t see anything in the UCI’s new program that would curb the abuses of process that keep Operacion Puerto and the Landis case in the news. And if the process, itself, isn’t fixed then none of the UCI’s new program will amount to anything.

All of this leaves me wondering if (to slightly paraphrase MacBeth [Act V, Scene V]):

[This program’s] but a walking shadow, a poor player
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage
And then is heard no more: it is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.