As a recap, in the first post of this series, I talked about the idea of proportionality in terms of the punishment an athlete should received if he or she is caught doping in competition. In a nutshell, I advocated that the punishment should fit the crime. The one-size-fits-all punishment that is the hallmark of the current anti-doping system, regardless of the severity of the infraction, is fundamentally flawed.
In that post, I spoke only of doping infractions that occur in competition. As Millard Baker pointed out, while some drugs may have only a short-term effect when used in competition, some of these medications may also be used during the athletes’ training cycles to either enable him/her to train harder for a longer period of time, or to add muscle, or to add blood cells to boost the body’s energy-delivery systems, or a number of other purposes. So there needs to be something in the anti-doping rules to deal with doping out of competition. But again, in a case like that, we have to be careful to separate the intentional from the unintentional.
For example, it’s one thing to be purposely using steroids to build muscle in the off season, or various drugs to enable you to train at a higher intensity for a longer period of time. It’s another thing to purchase a nutritional supplement, check the ingredients, see nothing that’s banned in that list, and then test positive because the supplement was contaminated with a banned substance, or something related to a banned substance. In figuring out what, if any, punishment should be assessed for doping out of competition, we have to take into account the intention behind the actions. Someone who’s purposely using banned drugs to boost training or performance should be dealt with differently than someone who may have been accidentally exposed.
DirtRoadie pointed out that we need to consider the role of the teams, too. That’s something I’ll look at in a future post. Another item that will be in a future post will be the addressing the whole idea of strict liability, and whether that’s really an appropriate standard that athletes should be held to, which Jon mentioned. He also pointed out that there are athletes (and others) who will find ways of circumventing detection. That’s a topic for another day, too.
As I mentioned at the end of the last post, tonight’s main topic is the following:
Which Performance-Enhancing Drugs Should Be Banned?
If you’re an athlete, chances are you’re using some performance enhancing substances or techniques. Everyone who competes is looking for an edge. So they will purchase nutritional supplements, sports drinks, PowerBars or Clif Bars, GU, Clif Shots, and so forth in order to keep their bodies fueled up and to aid recovery after a strenuous workout. Not to be too flip about it, but water can be a performance-enhancing substance, too. Or at least, performance-maintaining. If you stay hydrated during a long period of exertion (this is especially true in endurance sports), you’re going to perform better than if you gradually become more and more dehydrated.
Some people try to gain an edge via various training techniques and gadgets. A rather large industry has evolved to sell us power meters, pulse rate monitors and all sorts of things to help us wring that last little bit of extra oomph out of our bodies. Some people hire coaches and trainers and advisers to reach their maximum potential. What works for me may not work for you. But there are plenty of avenues people pursue in the quest for ultimate performance.
Most of what people do is legal, that is unless someone gets them to use various drugs or techniques that are banned — then it’s a different matter.
But there are drugs and techniques (e.g. blood doping) which have been banned. There is an ever-expanding list of banned substances and techniques that the World Anti-Doping Agency maintains. Any athlete who participates in a sport that recognizes the World Anti-Doping Code cannot use the items on that list unless he or she has a medical clearance called a “Therapeutic Use Exemption” or TUE.
Just as the one-size-fits-all approach doesn’t work in terms of punishment, a single master list of banned drugs is not workable. But the current system uses a single list, because such a list is designed for the convenience of the anti-doping system, rather than for the individual sports or the athletes within those sports. The current system of penalties, likewise, is geared towards the convenience of the enforcers rather than the needs and realities of each sport. So why should we move away from a single list of banned drugs for all sports? The reason is simple: Some drugs that have an performance-enhancing effect in one sport may not have a performance-enhancing effect in another.
Consider beta blockers. They are commonly used to treat high blood pressure. One side effect is that they can help steady a person’s nerves. So in a sport that requires a steady hand, like the shooting portion of the biathlon, beta blockers can have a very beneficial effect. Same for a sport like golf, where a steady hand could be the difference between sinking that million-dollar putt and going home empty-handed. But would these same drugs have a performance-enhancing effect for a cyclist competing in the Tour de France, or for a sprinter running the 100-meter dash in the Olympics? Maybe not.
Under the current anti-doping code, however, anyone who uses beta blockers needs a TUE. Absent that, if an athlete comes up positive for the drugs, they’ll have a doping case to answer. The bottom line is that even if there is an authority who develops a master list of all the potential performance-enhancing drugs, each sport should be concerned with only the drugs that might give an athlete an advantage in that sport.
And we need to go a bit further here. We need to be concerned with the drugs/techniques that can be proven to be useful, not drugs that someone in an office far away from the tracks, roads, playing fields and gyms happens to believe is useful. What do I mean by that? Some drugs are banned because they’re believed to be “masking agents” — drugs that can somehow hide the presence of a banned substance. One example: Diuretics. Because diuretics cause people to urinate more, so the thinking goes, an athlete may avoid testing positive for certain banned drugs. Maybe that works, maybe it doesn’t.
Every drug that’s listed, however, should be proven to have a performance-enhancing effect or a masking effect. If a drug is on the list only because someone thinks it could be used to cheat, then it should be removed until such time as that claim is verified.
The only drugs that should be banned for a particular sport are those that could give an athlete an unfair advantage. If the drugs do not play a role in the types of skills or abilities needed for success, then those drugs should not play into the anti-doping system for that sport.
While a master list stating all the drugs that could be banned in a sport and listing all of the proven performance-enhancing effects of those drugs would be a useful document, the anti-doping system needs to be more flexible. For each sport, the drugs that would be a benefit either in competition or in training are the ones to be banned for that sport, regardless of what effect they might have on athletes who compete in a different sport. Who should make that determination? I’m going to leave that for a future post, because that plays into some other questions, too.
Next up: A discussion about using the science and testing we have versus the science and testing we would like to have. In addition, I’ll look at the topic of who should be conducting the anti-doping tests and how much testing should be done.
BREAKING NEWS!
WADA has determined that all of the food groups necessary for maintaining human life are now on the BANNED SUBSTANCE LIST!
Henceforth only WADA accredited substances may be imbibed by any athlete participating in WADA ACCREDITED SPORTS!
Any infraction relating to this rule – will NOT BE TOLERATED!
Any and all caught in using the NEWLY DESIGNATED SUBSTANCES will be immediately transported to an isolation facility and kept there indefinitely and/or till substances are considered cleared from the infractor’s body or death occurs.
WADA THANKS YOU FOR YOUR PARTICIPATION IN CREATING A WORLD FREE OF ENHANCING SUBSTANCES:
Thank you for your attention – now back to your local programming.
Just in case some will misunderstand – my comment is ment in full tongue-in-cheek mode.
Morgan
Does that include hyperbaric tents? Does live high train low/train high live low constitute a doping offense. If EPO or Cera can increase hematocrit does not oxygen deprivation do the same thing? Shall we place hyperbaric tents on the prohibited list for cyclists but not for chess players? Masking agents, such as diruetics, increase urine flow and perhaps flush out metabolites; therefore use with these substances indicate a strategy to defeat doping tests. What is your intent, please? WADA includes a great many substances across the board as a deterrent for all athletes not to experiment with possible substances that could be of a performance benefit.
The very question “Which Performance-Enhancing Drugs Should Be Banned?” suggests that current doping code is somewhat arbitrary and capricious. True enough.
Something that I feel is critical in determining which performance-enhancing drugs should be banned is the relative risks and health consequences for the athlete.
Some doping regulations have the unintended consequence of, rather than eliminating doping, leading athletes to engage in riskier procedures, etc.
OTOH, the decision to establish 50% as the hematocrit cutoff was beautiful. The significant health risks (i.e. possibility of death) from Epogen abuse was eliminated. The hematocrit test is easy and inexpensive. It doesn’t keep athletes from doping, but it prevents harm to them as a result of doping with erythropoeisis drugs.
Interestingly, it also creates a practically level playing field where every athlete – surprise, surprise – has hematocrit levels of just under 50%.
Cyclists can fudge the numbers pre- and post- testing with overhydration and mini-blood transfusions, but it saves them from the risky 60% levels that killed cyclists in the 80s.
Jon,
I think that perhaps we should look deeper into the “Chess Players Union” and if they prove to be as worthless as the cycling unions – the CPU’s should be dealt with the same as the cyclists. I’ve long had my doubts about Tidily-Wink players at the NATIONAL levels – Definitely NO HYPERBARIC anything for them!
In fact Jon – I believe that we should prohibit any substance what so ever that in any way “enables” any and all athletes to perform at all! This of course includes the use of non-WADA approved water.
As to WADA – Accredited Banned Substances or ABS’s – I have nothing scientific against them at all. In fact – I think that as soon as they actually begin to apply scientific method that can prove any accusation they make against any individual. I will be a happy man.
Since WADA does not appear to ACTUALLY APPLY non-wishful scientific method – my POINT is that all competitive athletes should be PROVIDED – a WADA ACCREDITED “pure” substance that WADA is unequivocally certain has not been tampered with – as a universally “WADA approved” source of energy. I see this as “taking all possibilities” out of the hands of possible cheaters.
And Jon — I sincerely believe that any claim that contains a phrase such as – “and perhaps flush out metabolites” — should never be used or applied when discussing actual scientific knowledge. But I’ll admit it — I am not a scientist — but if pressed — I can “play” one — that is If I am given a decent script to follow.
At least a better script then the one WADA uses now?
Right Morgan,
With your logic WADA can collect the road kill on the side of the course. When the riders die from a lack of hydration we can keep statistics and congratulate ourselves on a job well done. So, your allegory is well taken.
I’ve been away for a few days, busy with other things and am just now catching up here. Some interesting ideas in Rant’s last 2 posts and comments thereto.
I like the idea of some kind of proportional and progressive penalties. However, I do wonder about the idea of trying to offset the presumed advantage of doping by time penalties. How do we determine what is an appropriate penalty to offset the use of EPO, for example? Does it benefit all users the same, or perhaps there are some who would benefit more from its use. If the time penalty doesn’t fully offset the advantage, there still is incentive for doping.
Consider perhaps a somewhat trivial example from the sport of basketball: fouling the shooter. If you foul a shooter and he misses, he is awarded 2 or 3 freethrows, depending on whether he is shooting for a 2 or 3 point basket. The idea is to negate the tactical advantage of causing a play to miss by fouling him. But even the best FT shooter doesn’t make 100% of his FTs, and many players and teams consider it to be a viable tactic to foul a shooter and “make him earn it from the FT line”. Plus the fouling team has a decided advantage for grabbing the rebound if the last FT is missed. Jim Valvano’s NC State team used this to upset the heavily favored Houston team in the NCAA finals back in the 1980s.
Then there is the question of getting benefits from a teammate’s doping, even if your clean. Suppose for a minute (and I am talking totally hypothetically here, as I have no way of knowing) that Armstrong was indeed totally clean during his 7 wins, but other members of his team were doping and thus better able to assist him. Tacking on a 10 minute penalty to a domestique isn’t going to hurt him much (unless perhaps that will put him out of the time cut-off), nor will it hurt the team leader. Do we penalize all members of a team if one member turns up positive?
William,
You raise some interesting questions which deserve some lengthy consideration. The question of how to determine the appropriate time penalties for EPO (or any other drug) is spot on. How much of a penalty is enough to offset any advantage? Thirty minutes in a major stage race (like the Tour) for each violation? That would pretty much put most riders capable of a podium finish out of contention, I suspect. It gets down to figuring out the relative benefit of each drug, which may take quite a bit of effort. But in such a system, I’d argue that the effort is well worth it.
The question of a teammate’s doping is something that’s not adequately addressed in the current system, either. And while I have no way of knowing if that were the case regarding certain riders in the past, the strategy you’ve suggested certainly could be one that teams may have used or might currently be using. Penalizing an individual rider wouldn’t necessarily affect the outcome in the scenario you’ve presented, because the role of the domestique is to sacrifice himself for the captain. As long as the domestique is still in the race, he’s able to fulfill that role.
The only sure-fire way would be for penalties to be harsh enough that the doped rider is booted from the race. Over time, if all of the doped riders on a team were caught, then the captain’s chances of winning might become progressively less and less. This might be a good argument for targeted testing. Once a domestique tests positive, then the whole team might be targeted for testing.
Of course, unless the domestiques are tested on a consistent and regular basis, such a strategy as the one you’ve outlined would have a good chance of succeeding. If they aren’t tested, how would we ever know they were doping?
Jon,
Perhaps, ABSURD and OVER THE TOP commentary is not something that is normally seen in today’s blogs — considering that we have been asked to “see” the war on drug cheating as the “new war on drugs” philosophy.
The intent of my comments is to look at this situation with a slightly “jaundiced” eye. Please do not think that the two comments are meant as “real” stances held by me in regard to the problem of dangerous drugs, inadequately developed standards and practices of testing or the intentionally vague and confounding rules and regulations in use today in the “fight to create” a level playing field.
As I see it, Jon, this and other forums are for individuals to attempt to develop a harmonious means of dealing with the existing situation.
William, Rant,
As I see it — part of the problem is the application of “punishment” for the crime. I believe that my comments on this are attempting to suggest that “penalizing” a rider/team with negative time bonuses in order to neutralize the “gain benefit” of a doped rider/team.
In today’s approach to dealing with this type of cheating is to “out the accused” — publicly destroy him/her and if possible, ban the rider from further participation in the sport. From what I see — this method of “stopping cheating” — is actually part of the problem with being able to change the habit of cheating.
If a “habitual cheater” is ostracized and prevented from competing then “he/she” – as an individual appears to be neutralized. BUT the problem of cheating itself is NOT DEALT with. By the very act of barring the “cheater” from racing – we PREVENT ourselves from being actually able to change the cultural acceptance and the “rationalizing” behind the idea that cheating is a viable option.
In no way do I intend to imply that “cheating or doping” should be accepted. I believe though that we must “rethink” what method of response will actually produce results.
Morgan,
I can go with neutralizing the advantage gained by using a drug, which would then level things out again. What the question becomes then is approximately what advantage does each drug (or technique, like blood doping) give? Some drugs, on a single use, give a certain amount of boost. If we can figure out roughly how much, then a time penalty of that amount will work. Other drugs, like EPO, or techniques, like blood doping, give a longer-term boost. For those, there might have to be time penalties on each day, or a large enough time penalty on the day the positive occurs, to re-level the playing field. I like the idea of leveling out the playing field. And I like that it highlights the cost of cheating in a different way. The approach has the potential to reinforce that no good will ultimately come from cheating, by putting the cheaters back to where they would have been without the drugs. That means they’ve spent a lot of time, effort and money — and potentially risked their health and their team’s ability to function — for nothing.
The other questions we need to address are: “How do we deal with those who use drugs during training?” and “How do we deal with teams with organized doping programs?” But your idea is a very good start.
Rant,
Perhaps I am not understanding this.
“How do we deal with those who use drugs during training?”
Is this question “answered” in today’s approach to “punishing dopers?” I do not believe it is.
What we “seem” to be able to do in the “testing” phase is to “see” results that gives us indications of doping, no? We cannot say exactly WHEN the doping occurred, ALL WE CAN SAY is that “a doping practice” appears to be in action — no?
Given that in reality the TESTING itself cannot deliver this answer CONCRETELY — are you then — asking for a testing procedure that will also supply this information? As far as I’m aware, this would then be another issue, no?
I feel that we need to “open” the whole testing process in existence today to be able to vet the results and the testing procedures applied in getting those results, rather than just “relying on the word” of ANY single “stakeholder” authority with obvious conflict of interests issues, who says “we know this is right therefore it is, and by the way — you cannot question us about it!”
As to your second question:
“How do we deal with teams with organized doping programs?”
This is where I believe the “practice of doping” needs to be looked at seriously as an actual case of “organized crime” in action. Therefore this “lawbreaking” should be handled by actual police and not merely by “stakeholders” in a sporting event.
In my opinion, this problem is handled today through sheer sleight of hand. The “organized team doping practices” seem to evaporate into the ether with the “stakeholders” in the “governance of the sport” claiming victory because a team is ostracized or is forced to disband.
If there are multiple “members” of a particular team that are “caught” then one has to “assume” that there is “organized” doping practices. This is an “indicator,” not an actual point of fact.
In the real world, if people who juice are frequenting a particular Gym, the cops become interested and proceed to develop a case for “dope distribution” no?
There is no alphabet soup group in existence today to do such “police work.” So the Team that is held in suspicion of doping practices gets away with it rather lightly, simply by disbanding, and throwing the busted members of the team to the media wolves.
Meanwhile the single members of this small and tight community wander to other teams and begin to do what they know.
Morgan,
What I started out with a few days ago was talking about testing conducted during races. What I didn’t really talk about then was the out-of-competition testing that either occurs between racing or during the off-season. (Which Millard Baker pointed out in a comment.) For some drugs, because the drug remains in a person’s system a long time, or the effects of the drug last a long time, we can never be sure when the drug was administered (in competition or not). Some drugs clear a person’s system quicker, so it would probably be possible to have greater certainty of when the drug was taken.
If we look at doping in competition and find a new way of dealing with it, we also need to consider how to deal with doping that’s done during training in between races, during the off season, etc. No less an expert on beating the anti-doping authorities than Victor (BALCO) Conte once tried to convince a certain Mr. Pound that WADA should do most of its testing of track athletes during the off season when doping was more pronounced, rather than during competition, when many athletes would be coasting on the cumulative effect of the benefits of doping during training. Conte should know. Athletes he worked with managed to avoid detection quite handily.
I like the idea of neutralizing the benefit gained from doping, and allowing those riders to continue racing under that penalty. What I haven’t figured out, yet, is how to take that concept and effectively apply it to testing conducted during the off season. I think there needs to be testing during that time, because otherwise, Conte’s technique for beating the system would still work, and athletes who are juicing would still be getting away with that form cheating. So, does that leave you more or less confused than before?
Rant,
Thanks for the explanation – as I see it then we have no choice but to “open the testing process” to worldwide scrutiny. As it stands, the tests we have are as Tom A Fine points out, more of wish than a reality.
Given the justifiable mistrust that the world community holds the present day testing facilities and individuals who do them — we must start from a point where there is “complete” transparency. Rather than waste all our time in squabbling and bickering over whether the French have the “true picture” or are they doing it because they have jingoistic pride to support.
I understand that much doping goes on during the off-season — I have no problem with a reality where a “professional athlete” is tested during these times.
The hubris in this is that one should question “why such testing” was not being systematically done long before Conte from Balco put it into the public pool of knowledge. The process of using drugs in this way is not new — it is referred to on the street as “cycling” which has nothing to do with bicycle racing.
Also the “knowledge and awareness” of this cycling technique was known to the area of medicine, meaning doctors — worldwide, even in the late fifties and the early sixties.
If this is so — and I believe it to be so — then we have only two ways of seeing what is happening today. The making of an “issue” about “offseason” testing is plain spin.
If the alphabet soup did not know about this “general knowledge” available in the worldwide medical community, then they are nothing short of being guilty of absolute incompetency. Or if they did know but failed to act on this knowledge, then one must ask why?
To accept the much-touted explanation that the dopers are smarter and that the guardians of right are always working to catch up simply cannot be accepted.
As to the application of the time penalties to individual and or teams who are caught doping or are suspected of doping in the off-season, would seem to take care of itself. Simply test systematically year round with the tests being such that both long term and short term doping can be detected.
Naturally, one immediately runs into the question of the testers needing to prove that their tests are “true” — meaning unbiased and based in vetted scientific manner.
Lastly, I see part of the problem as being that many assume that “exclusion” stops cheating. The governing bodies claim victories when they can accuse an athlete or a team and then put them through the ringer with a very slanted form of justice. The accused is asked to “prove his innocence” while the accuser sits back and laughs in his hand because he knows the accused cannot because the rules are such that actual guilt or innocence cannot be had under the present system.
I don’t know how blogs deal with absuridy, but I know how the CAS deals with it. If you review the CAS Landis decision you see no flexibility for the ATHLETE but there seems to be a great deal for WADA and the ADOs. LNDD violated SOP, ISL, C of C, WADA code, ISL, and WADA Technical Documents. The WADA Technical Documents are so poor as to be meaningless, the citations are non-existant, the references are questionable and out of date. Arbitration panels change the rules in mid-course to serve prosecution interests, the Landis “alternate B tests” for example. In spite of obvious errors by WADA labs the arbitration panel attempts to cover it’s tracks by saying that the errors “did not cause an adverse analytical finding” by citing an absurd out of date accreditation audit.
So yes, short of abandoning the current WADA code, there will be no reform. These hypothetical discussions, though stimulating will accompolish nothing unless the people wake up, see the problems and demand action.
Jon,
The current system certainly seems like the theatre of the absurd at times, doesn’t it? The whole Landis case is a very good illustration of just how absurd things get, as you’ve just pointed out.
As I lay out everything that I’m currently thinking, abandonment of the current WADA code is definitely something I’ve been pondering. I called this approach “reasonable radicalism” for a reason, which you’ll see more of as this plays itself out.
What I’m hoping for (though I realize it’s not very likely to happen) is that discussions like this one will eventually reach a critical mass, which will then create momentum for change. As I said, the chances of that are highly unlikely. But if no one starts the conversation, then the odds of any change happening in the near future is basically nil. Three years ago, none of the heavy hitters in American politics really believed that a biracial freshman senator from Illinois would get the Democratic nomination for president, much less win the general election for that matter.
Rant, this is a very interesting series of articles.
I’m sure you understand that in the current atmosphere, the only changes that will be considered by the powers that be are changes consistent with “getting tougher on doping”. But I think it’s important to consider how we would do things better, if somehow we could get you elected to the Presidency of WADA.
One problem I don’t see you addressing is what we might call “selective prosecution”. While we don’t have all the facts, we assume that the ADAs are only able to catch a few of the many athletes who dope.
We might temporarily tolerate this state of affairs; after all, we cannot expect the ADAs to catch all the dopers in one fell swoop. And we might assume that the ADAs are going to get better at this business over time, and that eventually they WILL be able to catch a substantial number of the dopers.
But this is not my assumption. My assumption is that the ADAs are not going to get better at catching dopers. We can argue whether my assumption is correct; however, since I’ve made this argument on this forum in earlier posts, I’m going to take it as a given: the nature of the anti-doping effort is that few of the dopers are going to get caught, not now, not ever.
So we need to consider some questions of fundamental fairness: how do we structure a fair anti-doping system when only a small percentage of the dopers will ever be caught? Are we comfortable with the idea of punishing only a few athletes for something that many (most?) athletes are also doing? Some might argue that it is fair to make an example of the dopers we’re able to catch, as this will deter others from doping. But the converse seems more true to me: if we assume that a substantial number of athletes are going to dope and get away with it, then the athletes are NOT being deterred, and we cannot justify the selective prosecution of a few athletes based on the deterrent effect.
The question of fairness becomes more pointed in a system like the one we had in this year’s Tour, where certain of the riders were targeted for special scrutiny, and where the powers that be were free to select whomever they liked for this targeting, without rules or justification.
The situation in anti-doping is similar to that on the highways of the U.S., where the majority of drivers routinely exceed the speed limit (traffic permitting). The police are pretty much free to issue speeding tickets to just about anybody. And for the most part, I think that the police are good about not abusing this authority, as they seem to “target” those drivers who are driving at the highest speeds. But the ticketed drivers can justifiably complain “why me?”, as they are being punished for breaking a law that most everyone else was also breaking. Still, we tolerate this selective punishment, in part because the penalties are not too severe (at least for those who are not repeat offenders). The speeders are forced to drive more slowly for a time (you don’t want to get that second ticket), and perhaps our collective driving speed is held in check to some degree.
Rant, I think that your model rules need to take this “selective prosecution” problem into account, that it’s simply unfair to severely punish the few athletes you can catch when most doping athletes will never be caught. To be sure, punish the dopers, just like we fine the speeders. But keep the punishment within a reasonable limit, in recognition of the fact that the doper is being punished in considerable part because he had the misfortune of getting caught.
Larry,
Good suggestions. Something else that I’ll need to work into the overall whole. I had already begun to think about targeted testing and how people might “qualify” for such testing so that it is not just an arbitrary selection or selection of people who the powers that be just don’t like. Selective prosecution is definitely on the list for inclusion, as is a modification to how we do targeted testing.
Rant, back in the day I was fond of contrasting the serious and comprehensive nature of drug testing in cycling with the haphazard and slapdash approach used in sports like baseball and football. I now think that baseball and football have done it right, though I doubt they did so intentionally.
The Larry Plan for reforming drug testing would be the following:
1. Recognition that no plan is going to catch more than a handful of dopers or discourage more than a handful of athletes from doping.
2. Recognition that the anti-doping program for any particular sport is not primarily about preventing or deterring doping, but is about maintaining a positive public perception of the sport. You expect the public to understand that there IS some amount of doping in sport, but you want the public to believe that doping is NOT that big a deal.
3. Recognition that there are going to be doping scandals in every sport. It is inevitable. Consequently, your anti-doping program must be designed so that it can adequately address these scandals in a way that most quickly buries them and restores the status quo.
4. Consistent with the above, you want to design an anti-doping program that is boring and non-controversial.
5. Design a program that is as simple as you can get away with, and that features the absolute minimum amount of testing that you can get away with. If necessary, blame the minimal nature of the program on the athletes, or their agents, or their unions, so that the public believes that you’re actually put in place the most comprehensive plan possible.
6. When an athlete fails a drug test, the process should be swift, take place behind closed doors and mete out light punishments. Light punishments are fair, since anti-doping punishes the few for the sins of the many. But our primary goal is to get the anti-doping story out of the headlines as fast as we possibly can.
7. More severe punishment is required for repeat offenders. This is OK, as there will be relatively few of them.
8. When scandal strikes, be prepared to “get more serious” about doping by increasing penalties and establishing a more comprehensive anti-doping system. This will be easier to do if your anti-doping system was lax in the first place.
This may sound cynical to you, but no tongue in cheek is intended here. I honestly believe that my plan is best for the athletes, the fans and the sports involved. Your book teaches that doping has always been a part of the sports scene, and there’s no reason to expect that this will change. Consequently, it seems to me that the primary goal of any “anti-doping” program is not to stamp out doping, but instead to try and figure out the best way for doping and sports to co-exist.
Larry,
Your suggestion is cynical.
Either we take seriously the “dangers” of doping or we play – “keep the public perception happy!”
The existing “anti-doping program IS DESIGNED” to give the “appearance”of fighting the battle. In one aspect you are right — the present system has been less then intelligent in dealing with the COSTS involved in putting on their little melodramas.
Going along with such a suggestion is to me “replacing one self-interest motivated” band with another. Where the ONLY ADVANTAGE and DIFFERENCE is that, the new ones are “cleverer” with the COST issue.
Both ideas completely ignore the one major problem I have with them. Both ignore the rights of the accused individuals to defend themselves against an accusation. Both the present system and the system you seem to be suggesting completely ignore this one simple fact.
OK, let’s look at this as 2 related but different problems: those who use PEDs during competition (or at least very close to competition) to gain a direct effect, and those who use PED during training to allow harder training, thereby getting in better shape, and thus getting an indirect benefit which may last past the time the actual PED is in the system and detectable.
To solve the problem of PED use during competition, we must be able to detect a significant portion of those riders who do this. Unfortunately, due to economic and other possible reasons, it is currently impractical to test more than a few riders. If it was possible to develop some sort of inexpensive screening test, which might have some degree of false positives and/or negatives, but could be administered to a much larger sample of the TdF peleton, we might be able to catch more users. Sure, we would probably get some false positives, but if the penalty was less draconian than now, it would be much less harmful to a rider’s career. The rider would still have to option to contest the result, and a B sample (and possibly C, etc) would be available for additional testing, if the rider so desired. But many riders just might decide it is better to take the penalty (whether it is being docked time, or a short suspension) than to invest thousands of dollars or more into a fight. If the false positives are random in nature, than the odds of one innocent rider getting multiple false positives are probably low. Similarly, false negatives would be random, and it is unlikely that a dirty rider would repeated test negative if he truly was dirty. Of course, there can be non-random factors involved in either false positive or negatives. So we would need continuing research to determine what, if any, causes of false results might exist and how to separate out these results.
Cycling – Doping – Franke congratulates France
Expert in the fight against doping in Germany, Werner Franke has prompted officials of his country to follow the example of France which, he said, adopted a legislative framework for effective combat doping in sport. “In France, there are several laws that are well formulated and applied. They are much clearer and more effective than those currently in Germany, “said Franke in an interview with the website says mobile.de.
“It is interesting to note that there is almost no French rider in the top ten of the Tour de France in recent years, Franke stresses. The French teams were down, it shows that the fight against doping is taken more seriously and we scored. “Franke retains the same reasoning when it evokes Spain. “There, nothing is done, he says. When we see the number of Spaniards in the top 20 of the last Tour de France, it says something about the quality of the fight against doping in Spain. ”
http://www.lequipe.fr/Cyclisme/breves2008/20081217_195637_franke-felicite-la-france.html
Morgan, I do not intend to be cynical.
I admire the effort that Rant is making to describe how the anti-doping system might be reformed. But even if he were made head of WADA, I doubt that his reforms would take us very far.
We are up against a number of hard and unpleasant facts.
First, the anti-doping tests are not capable of catching many dopers — there is simply a gap between what the tests can do and what we need them to do if we want to stamp out doping. Moreover, this gap is growing, not shrinking, as PEDs come to more closely imitate natural human biochemistry.
Second, there’s not much money available for the ADAs. Yes, if we could make Rant the head of WADA, I’m sure he’d spend the available money in better ways. But the fact is, there’s just not much money to cover the testing.
Third, any reform of the existing system runs up against nasty but unavoidable trade-offs: we want a system that is faster, more accurate and less expensive (at least to the athlete). But speed and accuracy come at a cost. Fairer processes inevitably take longer and cost more. If you’re serious about reforming the system, you have to deal with these trade-offs head-on.
I could go on. But I think the bottom line is, the results of any anti-doping test are inherently uncertain, and providing the athlete with the due process rights to challenge the test results will do little to alleviate the uncertainty one way or the other. In plainer language: the test results are going to be doubtful when they’re announced, and they’ll remain about equally doubtful after the ADAs and the athletes are finished fighting over these results.
What do we do, then?
One possible answer is to give up on the idea of professional sports, to conclude that doping has made fair competition impossible, and to decide that pro sports are no longer worth watching. I think that this is an extreme position, though it’s one that I’m tempted to adopt from time to time. Truth is, athletic performances may be fueled by dope, but they also feature levels of talent, skill and courage that go beyond anything that is available from a pill or injection. So when I watch a pro football game, can I get past the idea that no football player could naturally weigh as much and run as fast as the guys I see on my TV screen “¦ and simply focus on the amazing things these guys are able to do? Sometimes I can, and apparently there are a lot of other people who are willing to do the same.
OK, if we conclude that pro sports are worth watching notwithstanding doping, do we go to the other extreme and simply let athletes use performance-enhancing drugs? Again, this is an extreme position, but it’s logical and defensible given all I’ve said above. However, I think there is some value in maintaining an anti-doping effort, if only to deter the relatively honest athletes from doping (that is, to deter those athletes that are easiest to deter) and to prevent athletes from doping in obvious, excessive and grossly dangerous ways. Testing hematocrit levels is a good example of a sensible effort (in my view), as it may set some limit on the ability of athletes to abuse EPO and blood doping.
This puts me in the difficult position of trying to come up with an anti-doping system that makes sense, notwithstanding the fact that even the best anti-doping system is going to be largely ineffective and palpably unfair. Morgan, please understand: I am not trying to advocate ineffectiveness and unfairness — these are simply the unavoidable byproducts of any anti-doping system. What I’m trying to do is to both acknowledge that these byproducts ARE unavoidable, and then to work around them, try to limit their scope.
First and foremost, I’m trying to move to a system where anti-doping is not such a big deal. I can’t change the fact that the anti-doping system is inherently unfair, and that even an innocent athlete will be unable to mount a meaningful defense against a charge of doping (or if you want to see it from a different perspective, that only an athlete with the resources of a Floyd Landis can mount a meaningful defense, for all the good it will do him). So if I cannot eliminate the unfairness, I will try to limit the consequences of that unfairness. Let’s reduce the stigma of an adverse analytical finding to something like a traffic ticket. And let’s take the spotlight away from anti-doping. It can be handled in a more quiet way, again to reduce the stigma.
I appreciate what you’re saying about the right of athletes to defend themselves. I would not be taking my current position if I thought that the rights of athletes could be substantially improved with better science and better process. But if you think my position is cynical, if you believe that a plan like Rant’s could significantly improve the position of athletes in this system, then at least take note of the fact that Rant’s proposal does not stand a snowball’s chance in hell of coming to pass. No, we’re going to see more targeted testing, more severe penalties, more shopping of samples from lab to lab, and increased efforts to streamline the ability of the ADAs to win each and every case.
I am trying to come up with a plan for reform that is at least a little bit realistic. And in doing so, I am contrasting the anti-doping program in cycling with that in place in other sports, like baseball and football. I prefer the football plan. The punishments are a lot less severe. The players accused of anti-doping violations are not stigmatized for life. Their violations are quickly forgotten (assuming of course that they are not repeated). The players have VERY limited rights to challenge the findings against them, but that seems consistent with short suspensions and a general desire to put the offense into the past as quickly as possible.
So “¦ I like the football approach to anti-doping, but I’m also aware of what’s happened in baseball, what’s happened to players like Barry Bonds and Mark McGuire. We can analyze the situation in baseball from now until the end of next year, but I see it simply: the public would prefer not to think about doping in their favorite sports, that is until there’s a scandal, and then that’s all they want to think about. There are dangers inherent in these scandals: the few athletes that get caught up in these scandals get punished far beyond what seems fair or reasonable to me, and there becomes public pressure to deal more harshly with athletes . Before you know it, you end up with a sport like cycling, where doping is the primary topic of conversation.
So “¦ yes. I see public relations as going to the heart of what I would consider to be a successful anti-doping program, because the ability to keep the anti-doping program within reasonable limits depends on the program appearing to the public to be effective and successful.
Yeah, I get the fact that the program I’m advocating is far from a thing of beauty. Yes, I understand that it does not promise fairness to the athlete — it only hopes to mitigate the consequences stemming from the inherent lack of fairness. It’s not exactly an honest program — it’s based on the hope that the public can be kept from demanding the kinds of “reforms” that have led to the mess in a sport like cycling.
Sorry, Morgan. I think that my plan is the best we can reasonably hope for.
Jean,
Thanks for the link. I’m going to go have a look.
There seems to be a flaw in Dr. Franke’s logic, though. Assuming that the French efforts are the right way to go, then if everyone were to implement those same kinds of policies at roughly the same time, who would win the Tour? By Dr. Franke’s reasoning, placings at the Tour are related to the effectiveness of anti-doping efforts. The less effective the anti-doping system in a given country, the more likely they are to have riders who place in the top 20. But if everyone pursued the identical policies and if every country had equal success, then taking Franke’s reasoning to its logical conclusion, no one would place in the top 20. That, of course, can’t happen. If the Tour runs to completion, and if more than 20 riders survive, then there will be riders who place in the top 20.
Anyway, perhaps there’s more to what Dr. Franke said than was reported in the AFP article published by L’Equipe.
(For those who aren’t fluent in French, here’s the Google translation.)
Larry,
You may well be right, ultimately what we’re collectively creating here may have a slim chance of ever becoming the norm. Where I’d like to see the system go is towards something akin to aspects of what both you and Morgan have suggested. The bottom line for all three of us, I think, is that the system has to be more realistic in its approach to the problem. Where we differ is in what “realistic” means. But that’s half the fun of getting to the conclusion of this series. Finding the common ground and melding the best points from each of our approaches into an even better whole.
Rant,
What forget to say Franke is that the current performances of the “best” are still too high to be believable. So when the french riders, who are under the strongest anti doping laws since many years, who have many clubs, riders,…are far of the leaders, there is certainly something rotten!
Who can believe that is possible to follow EPO doped riders like Ricco and Sella on TDF or Giro when sciences gives a huge boost to blood doped users?
Do you remember Riis? or the ski runner Muhlegg? The sudden and drastic improvements of climb speeds since 1994 or TT?
And if we are looking all clues and indices we have, his logic is perfectly logic, at least for me.
Jean,
That’s the one point that needed to be mentioned. If it’s true that the best performances are too good to be believable, then what he says follows quite logically.