Michal_CH wrote:
I don’t know the study very much, but I know it’s highly invalid or unrelated to the common understanding of doping…
One example only:
if somebody had taken a caffeine booster in the 12 month period, then this person was classified as a doper.
There you’ve got your 1 out of 7.
Caveat. Caffeine was only classified in the "cognitive doping" category, so doesn't factor into the "physical doping" category which still got a full 13% positive rate. (vs 15% for "cognitive doping"). Still approximately 1/7.
Also a second caveat in that it's only supposed to cover caffeine consumed in tablet form, not liquid. So coffee, tea, energy drinks, caffeinated food don't count as cognitive doping. Apparently caffeine tablets are not "over the counter" in Germany as they are in the U.S.
I think it's still dumb to use that definition in the paper, as we have a very clear definition of doping in WADA. And that's the standard used in Ironman. It only muddies the waters to manufacture some alternative definition of doing that athletes knew nothing about when they were racing. If they wanted, for research purposes, to make their own categories, they should have used some term other than "doping." That's a term with very specific definitions and connotations to athletes.