Targeting the cheaters

My intention today is to give you an insight into the role played by doping control agencies world-wide, using doping control as a tool, in the fight against doping in sport.

National Anti-Doping Agencies (NADOs), such as the Norwegian Olympic Committee & Confederation of Sports (NIF) and Danish Olympic Committee (ADD) are responsible for carrying out doping controls nationally and internationally in an effort to achieve drug-free sport. 
 
The World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) was established in 1999 by the International Olympic Committee (IOC), International Federations (IFs) and national governments to co-ordinate testing and education efforts internationally. In order to assist WADA, three NADOs, the Australian Anti-Doping Agency (ASDA), Canadian Centre for Ethics and Sports (CCES) and NIF established the Drug Free Sports Consortium (DFSC) to plan and conduct Out of Competition (OOC) testing on behalf of those IFs working with WADA to eliminate doping in their sports.
 
The DFSC utilises the accredited NADOs in this work to avoid duplication of the OOC testing being conducted nationally[2]. These NADOs are already conducting a large number of OOC tests in fifteen countries on elite and sub-elite level athletes domestically. The athletes being tested include the current, as well as the up and coming international sporting stars. For example, in the Scandinavian countries a total of over 5,000 OOC tests will be conducted at the domestic level this year. 
 
In addition, on behalf of WADA, the DFSC is planning and conducting more than 4,000 urine and 430 blood samples world-wide this year. The NADOs working on behalf of the DFSC and WADA represent more than 500 Doping Control Officers (DCOs), who are educated and specially-trained in international anti-doping work. As there are no yet NADOs working in all regions of the world, the DFSC is assisted by International Doping Tests and Management (IDTM).
 
As journalists, in order to properly report the continuing fight against doping in sport, you may be interested in the basics of the process from planning the doping controls to management of the results, and I will try to give you a short insight in this.
 
Sports Analysis
Organisations involved in testing athletes will analyse the sports and disciplines to determine whether, and what number of doping controls should be conducted in and/or OOC. Some may refer to particular sports or disciplines as High, Medium or Low risk for abuse of drugs in sport.

Planning of doping controls also takes into consideration:

Athletes should be tested at the times in which they are likely to use prohibited substances or methods.  Statistically, men also tend to return a higher percentage of positive test results, and therefore a larger number of tests are assigned to that gender, although that appears to be changing in some disciplines.
NADOs aim to test in the places and sports that present the highest risk, that is to unmask the cheaters. In order to test athletes on any day chosen by the NADO, it is necessary to have very detailed athlete whereabouts information.
 
Test Distribution Planning
Doping controls are expensive, and therefore there must be some rationalisation to achieve maximum detection and deterrence value. Doping control agencies have become aware since testing began in the late 1960\'s that in many sports doping takes place out of competition (OOC), and therefore greater impact will be felt by increasing the percentage of OOC tests. However tests must also be conducted in competition, and in accordance with the rules of the sport.
 
In addition, while secrecy in planning doping controls is obviously crucial to ensure that testing is conducted on an unannounced, no notice basis, the expense and time involved in planning doping controls means that neither the NADOs, nor the athletes, want to be in situation where two or more organisations with an equal right to test athletes are present at the same location. Efforts are therefore being made to co-ordinate the testing programs. However, even where WADA becomes responsible for co-ordinating all international testing on behalf of the IFs, NADOs will need to retain control of their domestic testing programs in order to satisfy their respective government-funding bodies.
 
In Norwegian sport, nearly all tests are targeted and not are merely random. NIF has a high ratio of OOC testing in its domestic program (70% OOC and 30% in competition testing). Also, almost one hundred percent (99.9%) of those tests are conducted on a no notice basis. 
 
In the past, cheating athletes have taken advantage of the system of using short notice testing OOC, which meant providing the athlete with notice in writing or over the telephone of a time and place to meet to provide a sample. This meant that the athlete had time to ensure that they would be providing a clean sample. Therefore no notice testing is now always the preferred method of obtaining a sample for testing.
 
Athletes have been known to go to extreme lengths to return a negative test result, including injecting clean urine (their own or another’s) into their bladder. Being required to bare their lower arms, and from their midriff to their knees while providing the sample means that athletes cannot now merely squeeze clean urine from a bag in their arm pit, down a tube taped to the inside of their arm, or use other methods to manipulate the sample of urine. 
 
DCOs first try to test an athlete at their usual training place or in some cases at home address unannounced. If that is unsuccessful, they may need to contact the athlete directly to set up a short notice test, and often that delay can be reduced to less than one hour. DCOs are given the authority to be guided by their instincts and knowledge of past behaviour during doping controls in dealing with the athletes.
 
Athletes Whereabouts Information
To enable NADOs to continue to conduct no notice OOC testing, they are reliant on being provided with accurate and regularly updated athlete contact and training information. Athletes participating at the elite level domestically and/or internationally are required by their NADO, sports federation (national and international), Academy or Institute of Sport and often also their National Olympic Committee to provide those organisations with updated information.
 
Depending on the rules of the individual sport, and sports organisations in particular countries, athletes are well advised that they could be requested to provide a sample for testing at anytime, anywhere. It will not come as a surprise to you that some athletes are notoriously poor at updating their contact information, and for many reasons sports organisations responsible for collecting that information for the doping control agencies are lax in enforcing this requirement. In some cases this reluctance is deliberate, and in others it is clear that it relates to a lack of commitment or understanding of the importance of this level of detail. 
 
There are several ways that athlete whereabouts information is obtained by NADOs. Some IFs have taken a lead on combating the problem[3]. Many have, for example, sent out template forms that all national federations are obliged to return. Other federations have utilised web technology to update their homepage regularly with all training and competition information for the benefit of athletes and any other interested people.[4] A number of high profile athletes also include a lot of useful information on their personal homepages, and some will state on these pages that they include this level of detail as an indication of their commitment to drug-free sport. Managers of training facilities are also increasingly including planned training schedules for their venues on their websites. This can be useful where this contains information on the nations, athletes, and their expected training times.
 
WADA has also established an Athletes Whereabouts Task Force that is intended to further develop whereabouts systems. One system currently being developed is that of an internet-based Clearing-house, where the athletes world-wide could put in their training and competition program. Under controlled conditions then, the NADOs and the test planning staff could access this restricted information to further avoid duplication in testing.
 
You can see then that although there are many ways that accurate information can be accessed currently, language and technology barriers alone, make it difficult to achieve the goal of being in a position to test any athlete on any day chosen. Apart from athletes deliberately failing to provide any, or any accurate information, it is also difficult to combat all the life contingencies that effect the planning doping controls, including the weather, accidents, illnesses, family and financial commitments, and transportation, venue and accommodation difficulties.
 
The current draft WADA World Anti-Doping Code also includes the right sanction athletes for not providing accurate and up-to-date whereabouts information. How this is developed will be interesting to follow, but even to include this requirement at this level represents an unique historical change and if implemented will give the test planners greater ammunition in catching the cheaters!
 
Sample Collection Personnel
The people behind the on-the-ground doping control process (the DCOs) are an essential reason for the success of the program. The collection of the athlete's urine sample (and/or blood sample) is conducted by trained doping control teams.  Doping control team members tend to be recruited from occupations already requiring high ethical standards, including; nurses, medical doctors, police officers, people from the armed forces and teachers. 

A crucial role of the NADO then is in the development of selection criteria, recruitment, training, authorisation and accreditation, and the continuous monitoring of the performance and reaccreditation of the DCOs.