Challenges and threats to implementing the fight against doping in sport

Abstract

Prominent doping cases in certain sports have recently raised public awareness of doping and reinforced the perception that doping is widespread. Efforts to deal with doping in sport have intensified in recent years, yet the general public believes that the 'cheaters' are ahead of the testers. Therefore, there is an urgent need to change the antidoping strategy. For example, the increase in the number of individual drug tests conducted between 2005 and 2012 was approximately 90 000 and equivalent to an increase of about 50%, yet the number of adverse analytical findings remained broadly the same. There is also a strikingly different prevalence of doping substances and methods in sports such as a 0.03% prevalence of anabolic steroids in football compared to 0.4% in the overall WADA statistics. Future efforts in the fight against doping should therefore be more heavily based on preventative strategies such as education and on the analysis of data and forensic intelligence and also on the experiences of relevant stakeholders such as the national antidoping organisations, the laboratories, athletes or team physicians and related biomedical support staff. This strategy is essential to instigate the change needed to more effectively fight doping in sport

Sustancias dopantes y su incidencia: una visión retrospectiva del laboratorio nacional de prevención y control del dopaje de México

“…Hemmersbach (2008) presenta algunos datos históricos de los laboratorios antidopaje hasta nuestros días. Así mismo otros autores han descrito el impacto y las implicaciones que tiene el dopaje deportivo en la sociedad y en la comunidad deportiva (Ramos, 1999;Catlin, Fitch y Ljungqvist, 2008;Dvorak, Saugy y Pitsiladis, 2014;Atienza, López y Pérez, 2014;Smith y Stewart, 2015). México, para ese momento contaba con un laboratorio destinado a cubrir las necesidades de análisis de muestras biológicas de control antidopaje de atletas mexicanos, por lo que, la Comisión Nacional de Cultura Física y Deporte (CONADE), organismo rector de las políticas deportivas en México, dirigió sus esfuerzos para obtener la acreditación internacional de su laboratorio bajo el estándar de la WADA-AMA (WADA-AMA, ISL, 2009ISL, , 2012ISL, , 2015.…”

The Anti‐Doping Movement

“…Early efforts to deter doping in sports were severely hampered by an inability to test for performance-enhancing drugs [1]. Although equine drug testing was begun in the early 1900s [8], it would not be until the 1960s that anti-doping testing in human athletes was first introduced by the International Cycling Union, regrettably prompted by amphetamine-related deaths among cyclists at the Olympic Games in Rome in 1960 and by additional deaths at the Tour de France in 1967 [9]. Around the same time, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) first introduced doping controls at the 1968 Olympic Games, at that time only testing athletes for the use of stimulants [7].…”

“…Around the same time, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) first introduced doping controls at the 1968 Olympic Games, at that time only testing athletes for the use of stimulants [7]. The International Federation of Football Associations first conducted testing of athletes at the World Cup competition in 1966 [9].…”

“…Here, to complement direct detection of exogenous hGH administration, laboratories are additionally moving toward detecting biomarkers of hGH use or identifying the effects of hGH doping [26]. The athlete biological passport, and the concept of indirect detection, is considered by anti-doping experts to be "a powerful new tool" in the fight against doping [9].…”

“…Although many of the future challenges for the antidoping movement are not yet knowable, many challenges are certain to confront the movement within the next decade. One of the primary challenges is the cost of doping control [9]. As the number of tests performed yearly has increased [18] and the sophistication of testing has increased, so has the yearly cost of doping control.…”