The Anti Doping System Is Flawed. Will It Ever Be Fixed?, Can It Be Fix?
As I write this article we are just forty three days away from the start of what is supposed to be the greatest sporting show on earth.
The 2024 Paris Olympic Games.
Yet, with the share volume of recent doping cases of athletes from across the world, what are we are actually going to witness in France this summer?
Is it going to be anything more than a cheat fest?
Imagine for a minute a police force ill equipped to catch criminals.
A lack of funding, a lack of resources, and the age of adage of not being able to always be in the right place at the right time.
This is exactly the case when it comes to those who are in charge of trying to police the world of sport when it comes to catching those athletes who decide to cheat.
In sport cheating comes in a variety of forms, there are the pill poppers, the blood dopers, and one of the fastest growing areas, the match fixers.
For each, the anti doping agencies rely on some third parties to analyze results, or to investigate cases. Trying to catch a sports cheat is a very complex, often lengthy, and not always a full proof process, as we are seeing more and more each day.
Factor in that anything we put in our mouths these days we can never guarantee the authenticity of that product, its ingredients, it's purity based on labels alone, or the manufacturing process it has undertaken.
As the technological advances occur in the testing protocols along with the science, anti doping agencies are now able to detect even smaller amounts of prohibited substances that somehow have found there way into an athletes body.
Some of these substances have been knowingly digested, and then, as we are seeing across the world, there are those athletes who have digested contaminated products without any knowledge that they are doing so, which then results in a positive doping test.
The ramifications that result from an alleged anti doping violation can destroy a sports persons life over night.
Any hint of wrong doing is amplified on social media within minutes of leaks occurring, and the human cost from this can be both emotionally and financially devastating.
In the anti doping world an athlete who tests positive to an anti doping infraction has to set about a horrendous journey to try and prove that they are innocent.
This takes an enormous amount of financial capacity, something the majority of athletes worldwide are deprived of, as well as ton of mental resilience as they watch the only world that they have known, implode around them.
Some have decided to take their own life as a result of this pressure.
When it comes to the global supplement industry it is nothing short of questionable.
In the US for example , in many cases, companies can produce and sell dietary supplements without even notifying the FDA.
In Europe the industry is regulated but only at the point of sale. So effectively any ingredient can and are put into a bottle, and sold in legitimate markets as well as on the black market.
When it comes to the quality checks on Supplement Manufactures we have the cGMPs.
Current Good Manufacturing Practices.??
These regulations stipulate cGMPs for dietary supplements, requiring that proper controls are in place, so they are processed consistently to meet identity, purity, strength, and composition quality standards. cGMPs apply to all domestic and foreign companies that manufacture, package, label, or hold dietary supplements, including those involved with the activities of testing, quality control, packaging, labeling, and distributing them in the U.S.
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All supplement companies are required to maintain cGMPs, and to have a program in place to audit all contract manufacturing, packaging, and distribution facilities that they use, to verify compliance with cGMPs.?
Then we have another potential flaw in the system.
We have seen over the years that problems exist at the accredited anti doping labs across the world.
In researching for this article I came across a huge problem in a lab in Rome, Italy.
Problems existed at the WADA-accredited anti-doping lab where puzzling discrepancies were showing up on a variety of athletes tests.
Serious mistakes were seen, as high as five out of eight data sets were incorrect.
There have also been mistakes made around the (A) and (B) testing protocols where in a number of cases the (A) sample was tested twice, instead of the mandatory (B) sample being tested as the second test. (When athletes submit a doping test there is always a A and B sample taken).
Therefore, if an athlete can not have confidence in the supplements that they are taking, and they can not trust in 100% of cases the anti doping agencies protocols, then we have a world that cheaters can exploit, and a world where innocent athletes are going to be wrongly convicted.
So the question is, Is this good enough for the world of sport in 2024?
As I continue to educate myself on the complex world of anti doping, and as I learn more and more about the steps in the chain that ultimately results in an athlete testing positive I still feel more can be done to make the entire progress better.
In the perfect world we don't want any innocent athletes caught up in a flawed system, but we also demand a greater percentage of actually cheats being caught.
It has to be up to the entire industry to work together to create best demonstrated practices that become standards where the loopholes are minimized and the suppliers, athletes, coaches, federations, family members, governing bodies are all participating in doing the right thing.
I can categorically state that this is not the case today.
I don't yet have the answer. I am continuing my journey in understanding what could be done better and how it can be done, funded and resourced. What I do know is that "fish always stinks from the head" so that's where things need to start.
My message remains, say no to drugs in sport.
#saynotodrugsinsport #dopers #olympics #paris2024 #athletes #sport #cheats