Doping controls doomed to fail

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 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."
 

Henneberg said if athletes were tested 12 times a year, their odds of being caught was only 33 percent - assuming they were continuously using a banned substance.
 

"But we know that athletes don't continuously use performance enhancing drugs, they have increasingly sophisticated techniques to avoid detection," Henneberg said.
 

-Sapa