How easy is it to beat UKA's whereabouts system?

Eleven days ago Kazakhstan's Alexander Vinokourov won the men's cycling road race in emphatic fashion. Just over a week later GB's Christine Ohuruogu won a silver medal in the women's 400m. Both athletes have served suspensions, one for blood transfusions, the other for missing three out of competition drug tests. Vino was announced on the 6 o'clock news as the former drug cheat who ruined British hero Mark Cavendish's dream of Olympic gold, Ohuruogu's suspension is rarely mentioned and I'd be surprised if the majority of the British public even knew she had served a ban. Ohuruogu is portrayed as a victim of the system, a role model and an ambassador for British Athletics, Vino on the other hand is portrayed as a cheat and the villain. Ohuruogu a victim of the system? The system is victim of Ohuruogu.

There is absolutely no doubt in my mind that Ohuruogu was using performance enhancing drugs at the time when she missed those three out of competition tests. Missing out of competition tests on purpose is a strategy used by numerous athletes in track and field. This strategy allows them to reap the benefits of PEDs outside of competition thus eliminating the need to use 'heavy' products during competition when the likelihood of being tested is much much greater. I'd like to outline how easy it is to beat UKA's whereabouts system and how athletes manipulate it to continue doping. I'm going to use the method Victor Conte devised as an example, Ohuruogu was likely using a similar system. Athletes can only miss three out of competition tests in an 18 month period, unfortunately for Ohuruogu she ran out of tests to miss.

For this program the athlete will be taking seven banned products: THG, Testosterone Cream, EPO, HGH, Insulin, Modafinil and Cytomel. 

Firstly the THG would be taken two days a week on a three week on, one week off cycle preferably on the heaviest weight training days during the off season. The athlete would place 30 IUs under the tongue, this would accelerate healing and tissue repair. 

Secondly, the testosterone cream would be mainly used during the off season. The athlete would rub the cream onto his/her forearm two days a week using a dosage containing 50mg of testosterone and 2.5mg of epitestosterone. This dosage would offset the suppression of endogenous testosterone and accelerate recovery. This product would be used in cycles of three weeks on, one week off.

The EPO would be used three days a week during the first 2 weeks of a doping cycle and once a week afterwards as maintenance using 4000 IU per injection. EPO boosts the red blood cell count and enhances oxygen uptake, this enables athlete to cope with a much deeper training load during the off season.

HGH would be used three nights a week with each injection containing 4.5units of growth hormone. Similar to the testosterone the HGH would help with recovery from heavy weight sessions.  

The Insulin should be used after heavy weight sessions during the off season. Three units of fast-acting insulin would be injected immediately after the workout sessions together with a sports drink that contained 30 grams of dextrose, 30 grams of whey protein and 3 grams of creatine. This cocktail would replenish glycogen, re-synthesize ATP and promote protein synthesis and muscle growth.

The Modafinil would be used one hour before competition in the form of a 200mg tablet. It will decease fatigue, enhance mental alertness and improve reaction time.

Cytomel should also be used before competition to improve the athlete's metabolic rate. It should be taken in the form of two 25mg tablets one hour before competition.

Now that I've outlined products the athlete would be taking, how do they avoid getting caught? Most will use the 'duck and dive' technique, it works something like this.

Firstly the athlete fills his/her own voicemail and message inbox so they can claim not to have received messages from testers. Secondly they will put incorrect information on their whereabouts from, meaning they can still train without being interrupted by an unannounced tester. Once the athlete has completed these steps they can start using the testosterone, HGH and other drugs on a short three week cycle. Once the three week cycle has finished the athlete can wait a few days until they know they will test negative and resume training at their normal facility, or the facility listed on the whereabouts form. UKA randomly tests each athlete approximately two times a year out of competition, if the athlete misses three he/she will receive a sanction. This means an athlete can continue to dope using the 'duck and dive' approach until they have missed two tests. It's a pretty good trade, two supposedly innocent mistakes in the eyes of UKA enable the athlete to 'prepare' in the off season for their big objectives i.e. Olympic games or World Championships. It is my opinion that Ohuruogu was using this system and as a result missed three out of competition tests.

On a final note, if you think it wouldn't be possible to take the cocktail of drugs I've mentioned and avoid testing positive think again. This is the exact system Dwain Chambers admitted to using for two years until he was caught. Scarily he only tested positive for the THG, all the other substances went undetected. During these two years Chambers won two European titles, ran 9.87 for the 100m and 20.27 for the 200m, all heavily drug assisted.  

Does Swimming Have A Doping Problem? Probably not.

Maybe like a lot of you, I've been watching the Olympics over the past few days. In particular the cycling road races and the early stages of the swimming competitions. The swimming has really caught my attention. For a sport that requires such physical fitness, why is it almost untarnished by doping scandals? The only scandals I'm aware of are the Chinese in the 90s and Ian Thorpe's alleged use of EPO, and that's nothing when compared to the scandals cycling or athletics have suffered. Is it because swimming is free from doping?

It's unlikely, I don't believe any sport is completely free from doping. If there is an opportunity to cheat, a small percentage of athletes will take that opportunity. In my opinion the percentage of athletes who do dope depends on the environment they're in, for example a cyclist in the mid 90s would be far more likely to dope than a cyclist nowadays. Better testing and the blood passport program is a factor but in my opinion the main catalyst for change in professional cycling has been the environment, the 'Omerta'* no longer exists to the extent it once did.

However I really don't believe swimming has these issues that have plagued other sports, mainly because doping seems to be far less beneficial in swimming than say cycling or athletics. To understand this better we need to look at the average age of world records in swimming and athletics and compare the two (for both we will use the close of the Beijing Olympics).

Firstly swimming: The average age of a men's world record is 1 year, 1 month, the average for women is only 8 months, out of 32 combined events only 4 have records older than 3 years.

Secondly athletics: The average age of a men's world record is 8 years, 11 months (Bolt breaking a 12 year old record played a large part in that), the average for women is far longer at 14 years, 9 months (22 times older than the women's swimming records!).

Swimming doesn't follow the same pattern at all and I've no doubt the swimmers of the 80s and pre EPO test era were doping to a similar extent as the track and field athletes. It just means that doping in swimming doesn't increase performance to anywhere near the extent it does in athletics, largely because swimming is such an inefficient activity. The best swimmers are only about 7% efficient, so a drug that improves strength and power would have a far smaller effect because most of the strength and power gained is lost to the inefficiency of the stroke. Swimming only started to see world records tumble with the introduction of the 'speed suits', better technology in pools and an all round better understanding of how to swim efficiently.

When you're swimming fast improving how efficiently you move through the water would be far more beneficial than doping. This can be clearly seen after the farcical 2009 swimming world championships where almost every world record was destroyed. Soon after, the suits were banned and the sport went almost 2 years without a world record.

I'm not saying that doping doesn't exist in swimming, it just seems that doping is far less prevalent than you would expect of a sport in which world records were broken at will. For a sport that is so dependent on efficiency, it may be more beneficial to improve your stroke than improve your red blood cell count.

However that's not to say some athletes don't do both.........


*Omerta - Term used in cycling to describe the wall of silence surrounding doping, you simply do not discuss doping to an outsider.