Retrospective bans show new efficacy of war on drugs in sport

According to Robert Sabbag's Snowblind, considered a sort of unofficial manual in the so-called war on drugs, most illegal substances, in how they're distributed, administered and intercepted, work off cycles.

All these things, Sabbag reckoned, come in and out of fashion, but essentially remain the same. Snowblind was written in 1976 – and may well be as relevant today as it was 40 years ago. It is why this so-called war on drugs may well be never-ending.

Now there is evidence to suggest something similar in the so-called war on drugs in sport.

Since the start of this year, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) have gone about retesting doping samples from both London 2012 and Beijing 2008, now using more sophisticated methods of analysis not available at the time.

Let’s just say they haven’t exactly found what was expected. By the end of last month, 104 athletes – including five repeat cases – have been handed retrospective bans, 52 of which have resulted in their Olympic medals won at the time now being demanded back.

Those 104 cases showed up 136 banned substances (some athletes testing positive for more than one substance) and nearly three-quarters of those (72 per cent) have been for good old-fashioned anabolic steroids.

This doesn’t mean there aren’t some as yet undetectable substances out there, but when it comes to those still willing to cheat, it seems some drugs will always come back into fashion.

Indeed of those 136 banned substances that showed up in the retests, 64 were for turinabol, the form of testosterone first made popular by the East German athletes in the 1970s; another 36 were for stanozolol, the same anabolic steroid that Ben Johnson tested positive for back in 1988. Other substances that showed up, including EPO, are similarly old-fashioned.

Catching up

No one fronting the war on drugs in sport is getting carried away with this, least of all Dr Una May, head of Anti-Doping Ethics at what is now Sport Ireland (and before that, since 1999, head of anti-doping at the Irish Sports Council).

What she is hopeful about is that maybe this old notion of the cheats always being one step ahead of the testers no longer rings true.

"I do believe we are catching up," says May, who outlines where exactly the science behind anti-doping is currently at during 10 Things to Know About...Sport's Performance' (Monday, RTÉ1, 8.30pm).

“I know it’s the party line to say that, and we may not be running parallel, but we’re not far off, no more than half a step behind, rather than a full step.

“Essentially, they’ve refined the testing so that it identified the longer-acting particles. In other words, the new analysis was able to identify things that lingered in the body that bit longer, such as stanozolol. Athletes might have thought they were safe because for years they were getting away with it, but all of a sudden, the newer, more sophisticated test was able to find them out.

“With stanozolol, there was a problem identifying the long-term metabolites. If athletes had taken it in the days before the test then they’d likely get caught, but if it was going back weeks or months they’d likely get away with it. Now, what we’re able to do is go back and pick them up. Not just with stanozolol, but a number of other substances too.

“It’s a little surprising so many athletes are still using what are considered ‘old’ substances, namely testosterone, and stanozolol. These are long established steroids, not the designer ones which might have come out of some fancy lab. This is old world stuff.

“But eventually, athletes run out of things to try. Like most advances in science or technology, maybe there is a limit in how far you can go. And which might explain why athletes have gone back to using doping products of 50 years ago. So we’re definitely closer the gap, that’s for sure.”

Improved test

Indeed the Irish Sports Council helped fund the research, in 2013, which resulted in the improved test for stanozolol. May also agrees that a bit like the war on illegal narcotics, drugs in sport also works off cycles – although perhaps with a greater chance of battles being won.

“If you look at the history of doping, things do seem to go in cycles, with substances coming in and out of fashion. With EPO, when the test for that first came out, they moved on to fancy things like CERA, and other versions of EPO. Then tests come out for them, so they go back to the original, and look at different ways of testing them, such as micro-dosing.

“Same with blood doping. It started off with athletes taking their own blood, then they started taking other people’s blood. Again, they’re back to using their own blood again. We’re clearly seeing that with steroids. Some of these were developed in war times, and there’s only so many times you can tweak these things though. So there may well be a limit on what athletes can actually take, safely, without completely destroying their bodies and their careers, in the short term.

“With THG, designer steroid which came out with the Balco case, in 2003, the fear was there would always be ways of tweaking these things, but that doesn’t appear to be the case. They’ve tried all the options. But they’re back using standard steroids.”

There may never be such a thing as the ‘perfect’ anti-doping test, although May believes the advances in the testing technology and procedures can help create the ‘perfect’ deterrent, given the assumption that some athletes will always be tempted to cheat.

“The other point is that it’s becoming a lot harder to get around the testing, in that you need a team of people, and that creates more cracks in the system. Intelligence has come into play as well.

Pharmaceutical companies

“There’s also a new test that works off dried blood spots. That’s got some way to go, but would open up further opportunities to carry out a greater number of tests, in terms of screening, and with that identify athletes we might want to test more comprehensively.

“Anti-doping also continues to work with the pharmaceutical companies, in order to identify new substances that are coming on the market, so that we can develop a test for those too. So there’s better detection of old substances, and the ongoing detection for new substances too.”

The IAAF, the governing body of world athletes, recently opened an anti-doping portal, where anyone can submit information that may lead to a crackdown on doping offences.

“We (Sport Ireland) have had that in place for the last number of years,” says May. “We work with law enforcement in terms how the information is rated and trusted and classified. Without going into detail, we’ve been getting a mixed bag of information, some low key, some more detailed, but have looking at situations or individuals more closely on the back of that.”

According to the World Anti-Doping Agency (Wada) code, athlete samples can now be held for 10 years for retesting and with that potential retrospective banning. By 2026, it may well be that testing is one step ahead of the cheats.

“We can’t store every sample we collect,” says May, “but in the future, as we test off smaller samples, there will be constant evolution in the field. We know retrospective testing is a tough sell, because it can be a considerable amount of time after the event, but it has to be considered an increasing deterrent now, when you see the success in catching athletes four or eight years on.”