The current controls on drug use in sport are doomed to fail and performed largely for show, according to researchers on a new study produced in Australia.
The University of Adelaide study ‘Anti-doping systems in sports are doomed to fail - a probability and cost analysis’ examining worldwide data of positive doping tests from 93 different sports, found that single, random drug tests caught drug cheats just 2.9 percent of the time. For a 100 percent strike rate, every athlete in the world would need to be drug tested up to 50 times a year.
“The current system of anti-doping testing is inadequate to eliminate doping,” study co-author professor Maciej Henneberg said in a statement on Friday. “It appears that anti-doping policies are in place more for perception, to show that the right thing is being done.
“In practice ... the anti-doping system is doomed to fail.”
“But we know that athletes don’t continuously use performance enhancing drugs, they have increasingly sophisticated techniques to avoid detection,” Prof. Henneberg said.
