You’ve Come A Long Way, Maybe

To hear US Anti-Doping Agency head Travis Tygart tell it, the biggest threat to clean athletic competition are the doctors and laboratories who help individual athletes cheat. Institutionalized doping, in Tygart’s eyes, is a thing of the past. Perhaps he’s right, but the cynic in me has to wonder if he’s not living an illusion. It seems to me that the all-too-human desire to win at all costs is the biggest threat. Doctors and laboratories who provide help with performance-enhancing drugs/techniques are just some of the tools that the people who are bent on — or succumb to — taking a shortcut to glory will use.

Doping in sports has existed at least as long as modern sporting competition has taken place. For at least the past 125 years (more, if you count the efforts in horseracing during the early part of the nineteenth century), people have used performance-enhancing substances to better their results. Some legal, some not. Institutionalized cheating — whether through doping or not — likely still exists. The controversy surrounding certain Chinese gymnasts at the Beijing Olympics suggests at least the possibility that sporting officials or others might use some form of subterfuge in their quest for personal or national glory. Falsifying documents so that someone appears to be eligible when she isn’t is just as much cheating as snarfing down the latest version of snake-oil which promises instant athletic supremacy. The only difference is that lying about one’s age generally doesn’t have fatal side effects.

While Tygart may be right about institutional doping being a lesser problem in the United States and various other countries, I rather doubt that it’s true across the board. Does institutional cheating, in the form of doping, still exist in various countries, sports or within various teams — professional or amateur? No doubt it does. While Balco, Festina, Oil for Drugs and Operacion Puerto may have blown the lid off of various forms of organized doping, it’s not at all clear that such things are purely in the past. All it takes is for an enterprising person or organization to come up with a technique that circumvents the current detection programs and methods, and those bent on doping can continue their cheating ways.

What are the chances that something like that is going on right now, in some sport, somewhere? Pretty good, actually. The thing is, we won’t know about such an enterprise until one of several things happens. A new detection technique might come into being exposing the cheating. Such was the case when anti-doping agencies started using a new test for the a third generation form of EPO known as CERA. Or someone involved in the program might suddenly have an attack of conscience. (Not bloody likely, I know, but stranger things have happened, like Trevor Graham anonymously mailing in the tainted syringe that allowed the UCLA anti-doping lab to develop a test for “The Clear.”) Or a government investigation could turn up evidence of wrong-doing (Balco, Operacion Puerto, the mailorder pharmacies, and the beat goes on).

Victor Conte and Balco proved that it’s possible to find ways to beat the system — even if only temporarily. But, other than the athletes and their enablers, no one knew for sure what Conte and Balco were really up to. Perhaps Travis Tygart is right. Perhaps institutionalized doping is no longer occurring. Wouldn’t it be nice if that were so? From my perspective, though, it’s way too soon to be declaring victory. And the struggle to keep sporting competition dope free will continue, with successes and occasional setbacks, for a long time to come.

To give the devils their due, both the World Anti-Doping Agency and their US affiliate have come a long way in the last decade. But they have a long, long way to go in terms of the science and in terms of the process. Tygart told the Associated Press that “all athletes are entitled the presumption of innocence, absolutely.” That’s only true in a limited sense. Athletes may be considered innocent until proven guilty, but for those who are part of targeted testing programs, that’s a debatable point. Some — many — may welcome the chance to prove themselves clean. But woe unto him or her who is the victim of a false positive. And, the more times a person is tested, the more likely it is that a false positive will occur.

Once a person is accused, he or she travels through the looking glass. The athlete is then presumed guilty until he or she proves innocence. Procedurally speaking, the accused is not even entitled to any evidence that might help disprove the allegations — unless that evidence is contained within the confines of the laboratory documentation package that accompanies the adverse finding against the athlete. But it’s up to each lab to determine what information they will put in those packages.

The accused can’t argue whether the science behind a test is correct or not. It’s “deemed” to be correct. Also, from a scientific perspective, there is still no actual standard that all labs must follow when testing and determining whether or not an athlete might have used a performance-enhancing drugs, despite talk of “harmonisation” of standards around the world. There’s a certain irony to the fact that a system built to ensure fair play on the playing field doesn’t play fair in the enforcement of its own rules.

So, while both USADA and WADA have made strides in the effort to ensure clean competition during their short existences, there is still a long, long way to go. But let’s not fool ourselves. There will never be a time when sports are fully rid of those who would cheat to win. Someday, maybe, all forms of cheating to win will be an uncommon occurrence. But we’re not there, yet.