WADA 2013 Testing report
It's regretable to talk about doping on a day such as today with (hopefully) the exciting spectacle of cobbles in the Tour. Although this really caught my eye in the new this morning.
Exhibit A
Article from the BBC quoting some of the stats from the annual WADA report published yesterday:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/0/28194582
In particular they pick out that football conducted the most tests with ~28,000, followed by cycling with ~22,000. They then jump straight to the percentage of adverse analytical findings.
I'm surprised (well, not that surprised) that they don't bother with a comparison of blood vs urine samples or question the size of the registered testing pool (RTP).
On those two points:
It seems from the WADA Report that football carried out around 700 blood tests compared with cycling's 1,200 odd. I'm surprised at how low that count is for cycling. I thought blood tests would make up a larger proportion of the 22,000 figure.
I would be willing to bet football has a much larger testing pool than cycling (I haven't been able to find data for this for football). You can find the UCI RTP here. I'm disappointed that WADA, as far as I can tell from a quick glance, haven't factored this into their report.
Overall, some dodgy statistical practices that for me results in more questions than answers.
Exhibit A
Article from the BBC quoting some of the stats from the annual WADA report published yesterday:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/0/28194582
In particular they pick out that football conducted the most tests with ~28,000, followed by cycling with ~22,000. They then jump straight to the percentage of adverse analytical findings.
I'm surprised (well, not that surprised) that they don't bother with a comparison of blood vs urine samples or question the size of the registered testing pool (RTP).
On those two points:
It seems from the WADA Report that football carried out around 700 blood tests compared with cycling's 1,200 odd. I'm surprised at how low that count is for cycling. I thought blood tests would make up a larger proportion of the 22,000 figure.
I would be willing to bet football has a much larger testing pool than cycling (I haven't been able to find data for this for football). You can find the UCI RTP here. I'm disappointed that WADA, as far as I can tell from a quick glance, haven't factored this into their report.
Overall, some dodgy statistical practices that for me results in more questions than answers.
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