Drug Testing

Crawlinguphills

I was looking for some help from those with more knowledge than me. We have a public speaking competition at work, where we have to present for 15 minutes on a subject of personal interest. The prize is a trip for two to Belgium, so well worth the effort.

I have decided to speak about drugs in sport. The angle is that almost everyone in the room will consider cycling the most dirty sport with regards to use of drugs, and I want to dispel that myth and highlight the failings of drug testing in other professional sports, which pretend they don't have a problem. I don't think cycling is worst with use of banned substances, they are just the best at drug testing.

The one I have found thus far which is mind blowing is of course football. The FA made 1,278 test across ALL professional players in the UK. On average a pro team will have 24 guys in the squad, meaning that taking the top four leagues alone there are 2208 players. This means there is only a bit more than a 50% chance that a player will get tested at least once in a season, and very very VERY long odds they will get tested twice.

The NBA is also fantastically funny, with 4 tests happening a season, and after the 4 tests they cant test you again. So if you get tested 4 times in the first two months, you can take what you like for the rest of the season. They also don't get blood tested.

However, to back up my argument, I cant find any stats about how many times the average pro cyclist gets tested in a season?

Any help appreciated.

frenchfighter

You should be able to find some info/discussion here:
viewtopic.php?f=40002&t=12885414

Eg/.

danlikesbikes

UCI testing info can be found here - http://www.uci.ch/templates/UCI/UCI1/la ... Q&LangId=1

Q & A on the biological passport - http://www.uci.ch/templates/UCI/UCI2/la ... Y&LangId=1

Crawlinguphills

Great stuff, thanks guys.

markwb79

frenchfighter wrote:

You should be able to find some info/discussion here:
viewtopic.php?f=40002&t=12885414

Eg/.

Is the percentage of competitors?

frenchfighter

Amount of people tested then % of those tests that were positive.

markwb79

frenchfighter wrote:

Amount of people tested then % of those tests that were positive.

ta

and football is?

DeadCalm

frenchfighter wrote:

Amount of people tested then % of those tests that were positive.

Which would mean there were 321 positive tests in cycling in 2011, with one in 60 tests a positive. That can't be right, surely?

ad_snow

frenchfighter wrote:

You should be able to find some info/discussion here:
viewtopic.php?f=40002&t=12885414

Eg/.

Why would anyone need to take performance enhancing drugs for bridge the card game?

LeicesterLad

DeadCalm wrote:

frenchfighter wrote:

Amount of people tested then % of those tests that were positive.

Which would mean there were 321 positive tests in cycling in 2011, with one in 60 tests a positive. That can't be right, surely?

Assume it includes cycling at all (tested) levels as well as MTB and BMX.

cougie

Extra strong caffeine to stay awake ?

frenchfighter

Markwb79 wrote:

frenchfighter wrote:

Amount of people tested then % of those tests that were positive.

ta

and football is?

Annoyingly it isnt on there. Or tennis.

squired

If you do some searching about the sad death of Surrey cricketer Tom Maynard last year I think you'll find some good stats about how little drug testing is performed in cricket. At the time there was apparently a lot of talk about a drink and drug culture at Surrey. Hair samples on Maynard indicated use of cocaine practically every day for at least the previous six months. Given the frequency of cricket games he would've presumably tested positive had he been tested and in fact had he been caught he could still be alive today. Personally I see it as a great example of where drug testing is not just clearly inadequate to catch cheats but could also be a life saver if properly implemented.

A funny one in football (a few years ago mind you) was when FIFA said they wouldn't perform blood testing at the World Cup because it was too expensive!

Another one I found interesting from a few years ago was the Balco guy (Victor Conte). He apparently told the US authorities that testing of Olympic athletes in competition was pointless and that they actually needed to focus their testing during the off season, as that is where a lot of the worst stuff goes on. If you do some searches on the net I'm sure you'll find something about it. Anyway, from memory I think he said they did increase testing during the winter period (and caught more people as a result), but the winter before the next Olympics they reduced the amount of testing to a significant degree. His inference being that they didn't want to catch people before the Olympics and that getting big results (i.e. medals) was more important than catching cheats.

above_the_cows

frenchfighter wrote:

Markwb79 wrote:

frenchfighter wrote:

Amount of people tested then % of those tests that were positive.

ta

and football is?

Annoyingly it isnt on there. Or tennis.

The fact that the information concerning football and tennis is hard to come by should tell us something about the respective power of their governing bodies and their place in the hierarchy of sports. The more power you have the easier it is to resist claims for accountability and requests for transparency.

oneof1982

UK sport tests 2003-2008Source – Daily Telegraph 15 April 2008, sport13 – Brendan Gallagher
This is from a slide in a wider presentation, so sorry about the formatting, but in essence the first number is the number of positives and the second is the number of people disciplined.
Sport/ Number of Positives/ Number Disciplined
Rugby Union 62 48
Football (only 4 named) 54 38
Rugby League 48 30
Powerlifting 41 35
Weightlifting 19 13
Basketball 18 15
Athletics 14 4
Boxing 13 11
Cycling 11 5
Judo 7 6
Cricket 6 3
Snooker 6 3
Swimming 6 2
Body Building 5 4
Equestrian 5 2
Short Track Skating 5 0

UK sport tests 2003-2008Source – Daily Telegraph 15 April 2008, sport13 – Brendan Gallagher

If it was for your PhD I'd go to the source and check out the methodology etc. If it is for a public speaking competition, I'd just parrot out the worst examples and bang the table emphatically!

shinyhelmut

If you want some data on tennis then look here;

http://tennishasasteroidproblem.blogspot.co.uk/p/doping-statistics.html

http://tennishasasteroidproblem.blogspot.co.uk/

And with more emphasis on endurance support then try here;

[urlhttp://www.sportsscientists.com/2008/01/doping.html][/url]

You've got an uphill battle, people don't want to hear that their sport is dirty. There's none so blind as those who will not see.

danlikesbikes

WADA's most up to date & comprehensive list is from 2011 - http://www.wada-ama.org/Documents/Resou ... igures.pdf

Gives breakdowns of olympic vrs none olympic sports, by sport, by banned substance etc so can get a lot of info out of it

gpreeves

ShinyHelmut wrote:

If you want some data on tennis then look here;

http://tennishasasteroidproblem.blogspot.co.uk/p/doping-statistics.html

http://tennishasasteroidproblem.blogspot.co.uk/

And with more emphasis on endurance support then try here;

[urlhttp://www.sportsscientists.com/2008/01/doping.html][/url]

You've got an uphill battle, people don't want to hear that their sport is dirty. There's none so blind as those who will not see.

I've looked at the tennis stats in the past, even the top players are tested very infrequently. All the data for the number of tests per player is in this link:

http://www.itftennis.com/antidoping/statistics/data.aspx

When you look through the stats you'll see that some of the top players have had entire seasons without being tested once out of competition. Lots of players get tested fewer than 7 times in competition each year. For a telling comparison, it's worth noting that LA faced (and fraudulently passed) 10 in-competition tests during the 2001 TdF alone.

It would definitely be worth mentioning the use of the biological passport - cycling has been doing this since 2008. Tennis and other sports have only just adopted it.

http://www.itftennis.com/antidoping/news/articles/anti-doping-programme-to-introduce-biological-passport.aspx

Richmond Racer

Strictly speaking tennis hasn't adopted the bio passport yet. Because of very vocal pressure from most notably Federer and Murray the ITF had to bow to growing pressure to announce that they will adopt it. However speeches given by the ITF president show they're doing so in the manner of kids being made to go on a visit somewhere when they'd really rather be left to play in their back garden.

It takes months to build up the athletes profiles and as of this moment this process hasn't yet begun, nor has the ITF released any details of how and when they're going to start the exercise.

If you're interested, take a look at the Tennishasasteroidproblem blog

johnboy183

Can't find the article sorry but very recently read an article about the rfu's policy on its education programme about PED's in the game. Anyhow here's a link to them http://www.rfu.com/thegame/antidoping/illicitdrugs

No_Ta_Doctor

There's a pretty good article on doping in football here:
http://www.4dfoot.com/2013/02/09/doping ... -evidence/

Some of the claims are a little thin, but there are some astounding standout points - especially regarding the late 90s Juventus team.

The independent ran an article on the original trial here:
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world ... 56776.html

There were a series of appeals, which resulted in the original criminal convictions being allowed to stand, but no punishment whatsoever being handed out.

David Foot wrote:

The Cassation court – the highest in the land – came to a final decision in March 2007. It was a classic Italian judicial compromise, satisfying nobody. In the first place the sentences absolving both (Juve president) Giraudo and (club doctor) Agricola were quashed. But the statute of limitations meant that nobody could any longer be convicted for the crimes of ‘sporting fraud’ and doping. So, in short, the judges had upheld the original sentence (guilty) but, in practice, everybody walked free without a mark on their criminal record.

http://thelongballtactic.wordpress.com/tag/agricola/

You can see if any of your audience that are so sure football doesn't have a problem have even heard about it. You could show them the Juventus wikipedia entry here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Juventus and ask them to find the mention of it. The supreme best team in the world in the nineties was systematically doping and 99.9% of the people who can still name a number of their players never heard about it.

If you're on twitter then follow https://twitter.com/Giggs_Boson for plenty more.

knedlicky

Here’s a few links which concern UK football, or cover it together with other sports, and which you might find useful.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1725181/pdf/v039p00e18.pdf
http://en.academic.ru/dic.nsf/enwiki/430962
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2036409/Gary-OConnor-tested-positive-cocaine-Channel-4-names-Premiership-footballer.html
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/sport/football/8761856/Eight-clubs-fined-for-doping-offences-by-FA.html
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/sport/othersports/drugsinsport/8758980/FA-defends-drugs-policy-as-guilty-are-named.html

The first Telegraph link doesn’t name the 8 clubs involved but supposedly two were Arsenal and Chelsea.

Also see if you can find this book from 2008/2009:
“An Introduction to Drugs in Sport, Addicted to winning?” by Ivan Waddington and Andy Smith. It includes chapters on cycling and football.

Doping in UK football may never have been as organised as the cases in Italy and some other European lands, but it seems to have always been present, in the past as some sort of pep pills for matches (Everton apparently won the championship in 1962-63 with the help of Benzedrine) and, more recently, recreational drugs on non-match days.
And I’d be pretty certain that some current Premier League players take steroids.

No_Ta_Doctor

knedlicky wrote:

,
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/sport/football/8761856/Eight-clubs-fined-for-doping-offences-by-FA.html

The first Telegraph link doesn’t name the 8 clubs involved but supposedly two were Arsenal and Chelsea.

Have you got any more on that? Wenger has been pretty outspoken about doping, so it surprises me. I'm also an Arsenal fan....

knedlicky

No tA Doctor wrote:

knedlicky wrote:

,
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/sport/football/8761856/Eight-clubs-fined-for-doping-offences-by-FA.html
The first Telegraph link doesn’t name the 8 clubs involved but supposedly two were Arsenal and Chelsea.

Have you got any more on that? Wenger has been pretty outspoken about doping, so it surprises me. I'm also an Arsenal fan....

Yes I know about Wenger’s attitude. And on reflection I think I’ve made a mistake in what I wrote above, by getting mixed up between the Telegraph report and newspaper reports from a few years earlier in the Guardian and/or Observer (for which I have no links).

Those earlier reports stated that the FA had penalised both Arsenal and Chelsea for some failings in their internal doping control programmes, without being specific exactly what the failings were.

No_Ta_Doctor

knedlicky wrote:

No tA Doctor wrote:

knedlicky wrote:

,
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/sport/football/8761856/Eight-clubs-fined-for-doping-offences-by-FA.html
The first Telegraph link doesn’t name the 8 clubs involved but supposedly two were Arsenal and Chelsea.

Have you got any more on that? Wenger has been pretty outspoken about doping, so it surprises me. I'm also an Arsenal fan....

Yes I know about Wenger’s attitude. And on reflection I think I’ve made a mistake in what I wrote above, by getting mixed up between the Telegraph report and newspaper reports from a few years earlier in the Guardian and/or Observer (for which I have no links).

Those earlier reports stated that the FA had penalised both Arsenal and Chelsea for some failings in their internal doping control programmes, without being specific exactly what the failings were.

Cheers.

I was actually under the impression that clubs weren't allowed to test their players, as it could be used to hide players with +ve tests by withdrawing them from training/matches (that was when there was no testing outside those times).

ozzzyosborn206

if i were you i would use operation puerto as am example. It can't be a coincidence that the spanish are top of football, f1 and tennis yet they brush evidence like that under the carpet. I would bet my bike that Nadal is on the gear, probably the reason Murry and Federer want more testing?

gpreeves

ozzzyosborn206 wrote:

if i were you i would use operation puerto as am example. It can't be a coincidence that the spanish are top of football, f1 and tennis yet they brush evidence like that under the carpet. I would bet my bike that Nadal is on the gear, probably the reason Murry and Federer want more testing?

Me too, the Tennishasasteroidproblem blog covers it well here:

http://tennishasasteroidproblem.blogspot.co.uk/2011/02/curious-case-of-rafael-nadal.html

Anyone who goes on an injury break with no previous evidence of an injury, then comes back serving faster than before is a little suspicious in my mind.

knedlicky

No tA Doctor wrote:

I was actually under the impression that clubs weren't allowed to test their players, as it could be used to hide players with +ve tests by withdrawing them from training/matches.

That’s part of the point - the internal doping control programmes which some clubs have (I’ve heard most Premier League clubs nowadays) are voluntary and not transparent. I don’t know how much info the clubs have to give the FA about their programmes, but probably very little and just what suits the club. Nonetheless, notifying the FA that there is a programme probably has a PR value for the club with the FA.

But this means internal doping control programmes could be used as were such programmes at Italian clubs.
While I really doubt that English clubs would actually give their players forbidden substances (as happened in Italy), I can imagine that some English clubs may experiment with medicines or products which aren’t actually on the forbidden list but which a normal healthy person doesn’t really require (as also happened in Italy), and I’d be pretty sure the clubs with programmes check their players to see if any private doping hasn’t been done to excessive (i.e detectable) levels and accordingly advise. ‘Advise’ isn’t the same as forbid.