BUDAPEST – Americans often take a holier-than-thou position when it comes to the anti-doping system. Indeed, U.S. athletes are typically heard to say something like, we get tested more. The upshot: you can trust our results more – we’re clean. The implication: others may not be.
New data from the Athletics Integrity Unit, a deep dive of out-of-competition tests from last year’s track and field world championships in Eugene, Oregon, makes plain that Americans – and fans of the U.S. team – ought to reconsider deeply held devotion.
These numbers in particular jump out:
- 18% of the 142-member U.S. team, essentially one in five, did not have even one out-of-competition (from here on, OOC) test in the prescribed period, 10 months before the Eugene championships
- No team in the world – none – came remotely close to the United States in the uh-oh combo of 1/ no OOC and 2/ top-eight finish. The Americans produced six. Next: Brazil, two. Four countries had one: Britain, Spain, Poland and France. The other 33 in the analysis: zero.
AIU chair David Howman
The AIU published the report about two weeks ago as part of its commitment to pragmatic transparency. It can’t disclose everything. It undertakes, for instance, covert investigations. But it in the interest of furthering the credibility of the anti-doping movement, it makes plain almost all the rest of what and how it does what it does.
AIU leadership is due to hold a roundtable Tuesday here in Budapest with journalists covering the 2023 track and field championships.
The report does not include the 618 OOC tests and 584 in-competition tests the AIU performed immediately before or during the championships in Eugene. The data includes only teams of 10 or more athletes. The AIU counted all tests from Sept. 9, 2021 to July 9, 2022, the date pre-competition tests started in Eugene.
David Howman, the AIU chair, wrote an op-ed accompanying publication of the numbers. It predictably drew little to no attention. Accessing the underlying numbers meant not only reading what Howman wrote but also clicking more links.
The anti-doping landscape typically attracts scant public interest until it does, when it becomes, at least for however long it lasts, something of a supernova – the Kamila Valieva matter at the Beijing 2022 Winter Games, the marijuana case at the 2021 U.S. Trials involving Sha’Carri Richardson, who Monday night won the women’s 100 meters here in Budapest in a championship record 10.65 seconds.
The day-to-day of it, however, is itself often incredibly interesting, as even the top line of the numbers Howman and the AIU provide make plain:
- 1/ One-third of the 1,719 athletes in Eugene had no, none, zip, zero OOC tests in the 10 months before showing up there.
- That number drops to just 6% for the top eight – that is, the finalists, which is where the AIU concentrates its resources
- 2/ Overall, only 39% had three or more OOC tests
- But for top eight, that figure is 81%
- Top-eight athletes averaged 4.8 OOC tests in the lead-up
“These statistics indicate a system that is generally working toward its goals, with the AIU and NADOs [national anti-doping agencies], for the most part, successfully concentrating OOC testing where it matters most – on elite athletes,” Howman said in his piece.
A perfect example is Norway.
Who in our world can be more sanctimonious about anti-doping than friends from Scandinavia? (Rhetorical question.)
Roughly one in five athletes on the U.S. team not tested before Eugene // AIU
And then there’s Norway — one in two not tested before last year’s championships // AIU
So, it’s entertaining, at the least, to look at the AIU numbers and see that, yes, 18% of the U.S. team had no test but 50% – 50%! – of Norway’s 20-person team arrived in Eugene having had no OOC test in the 10 months prior.
Of those 20, four finished top-eight. Three won medals: middle-distance standout Jakob Ingebrigtsen a gold (5000 meters) and a silver (1500), and hammer thrower Elvind Henriksen (bronze). The fourth, of course, is Karsten Warholm, the Tokyo 2020/1 men’s 400 hurdles champion and world-record holder; he finished seventh in the event in Eugene.
The average number of OOC tests for those four: 6.75. Clearly, the focus – rightly – was on Ingebrigtsen, Warholm and Henriksen (silver medalist at Tokyo 2020). The average for the rest of the team: 2.1.
Howman, not referring specifically to Norway but speaking broadly, said in his piece, “Now we have shown our hand and will be held to account. We welcome the challenge of answering the question, ‘What next – how can we improve drug testing in athletics and related efforts to thwart cheats?’
“Hovering over this question is the obvious reality that anti-doping resources, financial and otherwise, are finite and therefore must be maximized and used in as targeted a manner as possible.”
The entity now known as World Athletics, formerly the IAAF, announced in December 2016 the formation of the AIU to deal with all so-called “integrity” issues, doping and otherwise, in track and field. The AIU, based in Monaco, started up in April 2017. It is an independent agency.
The foundation of the anti-doping system is that an athlete is responsible for whatever is in his or her system.
The key to testing, meanwhile, is OOC. An athlete can’t know a date certain when he or she might be tested. That’s just common sense.
The AIU works with anti-doping agencies around the world – in the United States, USADA, the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency. Generally, as Howman points out, AIU is responsible for testing elite international-level athletes, meaning top-10 in their disciplines in the world.
It was a no-brainer for AIU officials to learn in the early months that anti-doping efforts around the world could be inconsistent.
So, they put rules not just on athletes but – on federations.
In this context, the key provision is called Rule 15, which took effect in 2019.
The highest-risk nations under Rule 15 fall into what’s called Category A.
For 2022, Category A counted seven countries: Belarus, Bahrain, Ethiopia, Kenya, Morocco, Nigeria and Ukraine. Six took part in Eugene; Belarus, because of the war in Ukraine, was out.
Everyone knows doping in Kenya is a significant problem.
Seb Coe, the World Athletics president, is on record here in Budapest as saying he expects more doping positives to emerge in the coming weeks and months there. That’s because the AIU, in concert with the Kenyan government, has stepped up efforts there.
To get to Eugene meant that every athlete from Kenya – and from other Rule 15 nations – had to submit to at least, at least, three OOC tests in the 10 months prior.
On average, how many OOC tests did those in the top eight in the Kenyan team have before Eugene? 6.2.
Figures for top-eight tests: far more rigorous // AIU
Ethiopia? 8.58.
China? 6.83. Norway? 6.75 (as pointed out above). Sweden? 6.4. Germany? 6. South Africa? 5.67. Ukraine? 5.5. Belgium? 5.33. The Netherlands? 5. Greece? 5.
United States? 4.95.
Canada? 4.9. Britain? 4.7.
The Americans put 59 athletes in the top eight; Kenya, 20; Ethiopia, 19; Jamaica, 14; China, 12; Australia, 11; Britain and Canada, 10 apiece.
For perspective:
Kenya brought a team of 43. Of those, 20, or nearly half, finished top eight. After being tested on average more than six times beforehand.
You want OOC testing figures for an entire team, not just top-eight?
Average number of tests per athlete across an entire team // AIU
Ethiopia: on average, 8.03 OOC tests per athlete before Eugene. China, 6.2. Kenya, 5.93. Morocco, 4.93. Germany, 3.82. United States, 3.73.
Canada, 2.59. Britain, 2.42.
It’s 100% true that the U.S. team got tested the “most” – overall, 530 tests, 232 by the AIU, 298 by “NADO/other ADOs,” presumably USADA. But that figure needs to be assessed in context. The U.S. team was far and away the biggest, 142. That’s why the average OOC test per athlete figures out to 3.73.
Compare to China, with 46 athletes and 285 tests. That’s 6.2 per athlete.
Or Ethiopia, 33 and 265. That’s 8.03.
Or Morocco, 15 and 74, 4.93.
Given those sorts of numbers, who is really tested “most”?
Meanwhile:
Recall that 18% of the U.S. team did not even have one OOC test.
On the other hand, Kenya, Ethiopia and Morocco were among those nations who, when looking at the row that says, “% team with 0 OOC Tests,” read out: zero. That is, everyone was tested.
Who else, besides the United States, came in at 18%? Sweden.
Britain? 21%.
Canada? 37%.
Roughly half the Irish team, 53%, did not have an OOC test. An even 60% of the New Zealand team.
Howman: “Numbers are meaningless without consideration of the quality of our testing. The AIU has a sophisticated approach to testing that is capable of catching real cheats who are operating at the summit of the sport.
“Few other sports,” he said, “do likewise internationally.”