Has anti-doping taken a step forward? Hopefully, because it needs to

It is, most people agree, a game the doping authorities are currently losing. And have, in fact, always been losing.

For every new development in the world of anti-doping, there’s likely several more advancements by dopers and their doctors to ensure they remain undetected.

Some of the alleged advancements by those trying to detect doping are, frankly, laughable but others are cause for optimism.

The latest development provides perhaps not quite a ray of hope but at least a glimmer. 

In recent times, erythropoietin (EPO) has been one of the most valuable substances for dopers.

It was one of Lance Armstrong’s drugs of choice, and has also been used by countless other athletes over the past few decades. 

Doping has been a factor in elite sport for decades

EPO is produced naturally but can also be taken synthetically and, in short, increases the proliferation of red blood cells in the body which increases the amount of oxygen carried to muscles. This slows the progression of muscle fatigue and therefore increases endurance levels.

For anyone in an endurance sport, EPO is a game-changer.

The drug has been around since the 1980s, was banned from sport in the early 1990s but it wasn’t until 2000 that a blood test to detect it was actually devised.

Currently, however, there are just eight experts worldwide who can determine whether someone has tested positive for synthetic EPO. The primary challenge is that differentiating between naturally-occurring and synthetic EPO is exceedingly difficult, which is why it’s quite so tricky to detect positive cases.

However, there’s been a step, albeit a small one, forward in recent weeks.

The University of Queensland has announced a partnership with Sport Integrity Australia to develop technology that could make detecting synthetic EPO more reliable, efficient, and accessible.

The plan is to do this via a tiny quantum sensor chip – it’ll be smaller than a pinkie nail.

This new technology will be able to identify proteins in synthetic EPO which look and move differently under a microscope to natural EPO, making it considerably easier to tell if an athlete has taken the synthetic drug.

The ability to detect the presence of synthetic EPO is vital; merely showing a high level of EPO means little given an individual can argue that it’s been produced naturally.

There’s a time-pressure on this research too; in 2032, the Olympic Games will be held in Brisbane and it would be quite a coup if these Games can boast of being EPO-free.

Even the researchers are encouraging people to temper their expectations; there’ll be no magic wand that’ll instantaneously eradicate EPO from elite sport given how long it’s been around.

But, having said that, this is an encouraging step forward, and that’s much-needed given the current climate.

Rather than confidence being raised in anti-doping measures as technology improves, in fact, scepticism is fast-increasing.

Look no further than the women’s marathon world record, which was broken last month by Kenya’s Ruth Chepngetich.

The backlash to her run has been like nothing I’ve ever seen before, even in the days of Armstrong dominating the Tour de France.

In the weeks since Chepngetich’s run, it’s been almost impossible to find a single soul who thinks her performance was legit.

And by legit, I mean clean. 

It has to be made clear that there’s not one piece of evidence that Chepngetich is a doper.

Yet the scepticism about her world record-breaking run, which took place at the Chicago Marathon, has been quite incredible.

There’s several reasons for this.

The first is that, by running 2:09:57, she became the first woman ever to run under 2 hours ten minutes and she broke the previous world record by nearly two minutes.

In elite athletics, that kind of drop is unprecedented.

Secondly, she bettered her own previous fastest time by nearly four-and-a-half minutes. At the age of 30, that almost never happens.

Thirdly, she’s Kenyan. And Kenyan athletes have been shown to be as dirty as they come regarding drug-taking. In the past three years alone, over 70 Kenyan athletes have been banned for doping offences. That’s an astronomical figure. 

And fourthly, her agent, Federico Rosa, has a worrying history when it comes to working with drug-taking athletes.

None of these factors, and not even all of them combined, amount to any kind of concrete evidence that Chepngetich is doping.

But what it doesn’t do is engender any kind of confidence that she’s clean.

This, coupled with the fact that there’s not a massively reliable method, never mind a fail-safe method, of detecting EPO is the reason for such considerable suspicion.

Athletics, as a sport, cannot go on like this.

And there’s the countless other sports, too, in which athletes are almost certainly benefitting from EPO even as you read this right now.

This new chip may not be the magic key, but if it moves anti-doping on even a tiny bit, it has to be warmly welcomed.

Anti-doping needs all the luck it can get at the moment, and an efficient test for catching EPO cheats is just one of many pieces of progress that must be made sooner rather than later.

AND ANOTHER THING…

Scottishathletics’ entry lists for their cross-country events never fail to amaze me, and this weekend has been no different.

At yesterday’s Lindsays Short Course XC Championships in Kirkcaldy, there were over 1300 names on the start lists across the U15, U17, junior, senior and masters categories.

(Image: Archant) What’s been so remarkable is the sustained growth of athletics in Scotland, and the ability of scottishathletics to get so many people competing.

It’s proof that if the right framework is there, people will take part and it’s a model many other sports in Scotland should take note of.