It’s The Olympics …

In less than 24 hours, the Beijing Olympics will get under way. Lots of stories related to the quadrennial event have been appearing over the last few weeks, as the Games have drawn nearer and nearer. Some of them involve doping, some not. Whatever can be said about the Olympics (and there is certainly much to be said), it’s one of the biggest sporting events of the year. But it’s not just about sports. It’s about politics, propaganda and money. Many forces shape the Olympic Games and it’s taken years for the current situation to develop.

The forces shaping the current Olympics came into focus during the 1960 Olympics in Rome. The first Olympic doping scandal — the death of Danish cyclist Knud Enemark Jensen — occurred in Rome. So did many political intrigues. Success or failure in the Games fueled propaganda for the two major players in the Cold War, the Soviet Union and the United States. And the much ballyhooed idea of amateurism was being tested greatly. Many stood to profit from the Games — the International Olympic Committee, the various sporting federations, the many national Olympic committees, and at least a few of the athletes.

Back then, one of the big bones of contention was the question of amateurism. The idea that those who compete should do so merely for the love of the game. The rules on what constituted being a professional athlete were rigid, and sometimes capricious. An athlete, for example, couldn’t take a part in a movie if various officials felt that he/she was trading on his/her sports fame. Even if the prospective actor wasn’t going to be portraying an athlete on screen. A couple couldn’t get married on a television show, again because it was felt that the athlete was trading on his fame. The rule against professionalism was absolute.

Unless, that is, you lived in an East Bloc country where the government pretty well set up and took care of their athletes. As the Games are about to begin, it’s worth taking some of your spare time to read the book Rome 1960: The Olympics That Changed the World by David Maraniss. Many of the stories that will play out over the next few weeks have their roots in events that took place in Italy 48 years ago.

As an example, doping has been around for a long, long time. There was the era in which athletes doped while no rules specifically banned the practice. The sole exception would be the IAAF, who banned the use of amphetamines in 1928. It was a toothless ban, however, as no testing was performed to detect the use of the drug in human competition during that era. After 1960, the movement to ban doping in sports began to take off.

Today’s participation by professional athletes traces its roots to 1960, as well. One athlete, a German sprinter, was sponsored by both Adidas and Puma, playing one company off the other as it turns out. And, of course, there were the East Bloc athletes, who were amateurs for the sake of the games, but treated like professionals with all the benefits their governments provided. Take the time to read Maraniss’ book to get the full picture of this turning point in Olympic history.

Flashing forward to the Beijing Olympics, one issue that occupies much the same space as the question of amateurism did in Rome is the question of doping. Doping is, in the current lexicon, a form of cheating. To be sure, certain types of doping — especially when done without any medical supervision — can have serious and deadly consequences.

The current anti-doping system, devised to catch those who would cheat, came about in part to preserve the public image of the Olympics. More specifically, in the aftermath of the many doping scandals that occurred during 1998 (along with a scandal alleging bribery of IOC members by various groups competing to win the right for their cities to stage the games), the International Olympic Committee wanted to maintain the viability of the Games at a time when their survival was not guaranteed.

The outgrowth of that was the World Anti-Doping Agency, which took over the anti-doping rule-making, prosecution and enforcement functions from the IOC. In their arsenal are a number of tests, some of which pre-dated WADA’s creation, and some of which have been developed due (at least in part) to WADA funding and support.

Today’s attitude towards doping in sports mirrors the attitude towards whether professionals should be allowed to compete at the Olympics 48 years ago. And today’s anti-doping system comes perilously close to adopting some of the same kinds of tortured definitions of what constitutes doping as the IOC did for what constitutes professionalism in that earlier time.

If we’re going to have a system that uses a concept like strict liability (the idea that no matter how a banned substance got in you, and no matter whether it is in a large enough amount to actually affect your athletic performance, you’re still guilty), we have to have tests that are excruciatingly accurate. Do the current crop of anti-doping tests work at a level of accuracy to ensure that few, if any, innocent victims aren’t wrongly convicted of a doping offense?

To hear WADA and their associates tell it, the answer is “Yes, the tests are foolproof.” Others aren’t quite so sure. Yesterday, Donald Berry published an article in the journal Nature that questions whether there is enough knowledge of the false positive and false negative rates for the various doping tests to be able to determine the likelihood that a particular “positive” test result is actually positive. Berry’s answer contradicts the anti-doping authorities’ point of view.

Berry cites the Prosecutor’s Fallacy to make the point that the actual rate of false positives may be much higher that we might, on the surface, believe. Berry also uses the Floyd Landis case to make his point, although he does not weigh in on whether he believes Landis is guilty or innocent.

Landis seemed to have an unusual test result. Because he was among the leaders he provided 8 pairs of urine samples (of the total of approximately 126 sample-pairs in the 2006 Tour de France). So there were 8 opportunities for a true positive — and 8 opportunities for a false positive. If he never doped and assuming a specificity of 95%, the probability of all 8 samples being labelled ‘negative’ is the eighth power of 0.95, or 0.66. Therefore, Landis’s false-positive rate for the race as a whole would be about 34%. Even a very high specificity of 99% would mean a false-positive rate of about 8%. The single-test specificity would have to be increased to much greater than 99% to have an acceptable false-positive rate. But we don’t know the single-test specificity because the appropriate studies have not been performed or published. (Note: Emphasis added.)

The key point is that last one. We don’t know enough about the tests and their specificity. And, in part, we don’t know this because of the lack of transparency in the anti-doping system. Reporters and fans are asked to believe that tests are foolproof without being told why and without access to the data that would prove the point. While one might excuse the fans’ not knowing, reporters should be demanding to see the evidence that the tests really are as good as they are said to be.

It’s that lack of information that puts us in a “trust me, I’m telling the truth” situation. There are many reasons that the authorities might be telling the truth, and there are many reasons they might not be doing so. Generally speaking, though, it’s like the old joke about politicians:

Question: How does a politician say f*%! you?
Answer: Trust me.

Berry concludes by saying:

Whether a substance can be measured directly or not, sports doping laboratories must prospectively define and publicize a standard testing procedure, including unambiguous criteria for concluding positivity, and they must validate that procedure in blinded experiments. Moreover, these experiments should address factors such as substance used (banned and not), dose of the substance, methods of delivery, timing of use relative to testing, and heterogeneity of metabolism among individuals.

To various degrees, these same deficiencies exist elsewhere — including in some forensic laboratories. All scientists share responsibility for this. We should get serious about interdisciplinary collaborations, and we should find out how other scientists approach similar problems. Meanwhile, we are duty-bound to tell other scientists when they are on the wrong path.

Even before the Opening Ceremonies tomorrow, doping related to the Olympic Games is in the news. Jessica Hardy tested positive for clenbuterol at the US Olympic swimming trials, and earlier this week withdrew from the US Olympic swim team. She says she never knowingly used the drug, and that it was may have come from a supplement. Howard Jacobs, her lawyer, seems to have learned something from is work on the Landis case. In the world of anti-doping enforcement, don’t bother challenging the science or the test results. Instead, he and his client are working towards showing that the positive test was either the result of a tainted supplement or sabotage, in the hopes of minimizing the suspension she will receive.

Stepping a bit outside the world of the Olympics, Ricardo Riccò, busted at the Tour de France for using CERA, has named his source: The infamous Dr. Carlo Santuccione.

Riccò who won two stages [of the Tour de France] before being thrown off the race for a doping violation, told [Italian newspaper La Repubblica] that he paid 700 euro for the third generation EPO named CERA.

“I have not paid, naturally,” said Riccò. “Santuccione assured me you could not be found positive. So I did not give him the money.”

Riccò was going to pay the equivalent of $1100 (US) for this treatment? Seems like he definitely got taken by his supplier. “Hey, trust me. It’s undetectable.” Riccò’s comments remind me of the old saying. “There’s a sucker born every minute.” And reports are that Emanuele Sella, of CSF-Navagare, has been caught juicing with EPO, too. Then there’s the report from a couple of weeks ago that a doctor in China was caught by a German TV crew offering stem cell treatment to improve an athlete’s lung function.

Meanwhile, back in Beijing, the Court of Arbitration for Sport is busy ruling on the eligibility of various athletes, as they fight to maintain or gain spots on various Olympic squads. No doubt, they will have to rule on a few cases involving the use of banned substances, too.

Whatever happens in terms of athletic achievements and doping train wrecks, the upcoming Beijing Games are going to be very interesting times.