yesterday in another thread i alluded to a feature to be published today on the front page. this is the result of about 4 months of back and forth with WTC’s anti-doping initiative, which is linked to the Ironman Pro Membership, and also USADA’s efforts in no-draft anti-doping. the theme of the article is whether these initiatives are working, are they robust, bona fide attempts toward anti-doping or are they not; are the pros who fund the ironman pro membership getting their money’s worth or are they not; and then specific technical details, such as, if someone returns a positive sample, will we know that or will we not prior to the case working its way through arbitration, appeals, etc.; and can he or she race while the process is working itself out?
why is this not up on the home page as of now, 3pm pacific, monday? because today has been a furious day of back and forth with USADA and WTC as we really get this technically, factually right (or at least try to!). so i apologize for the delay, this thing is 5000 words, it’s very technical, lots of data, but it’s 98 percent of the way there. i’m just waiting on the reply to my last few questions.
Dan,
I conducted a survey of pro athletes in September, and finally put up the results on my website this morning. It’s not nearly as thorough as your article will be, but you may find it interesting, as it provides another data point. http://dmactri.com/blog/
maybe a suggestion to possible anti draft solutions…
bikes on a trainer measuring watts, once you hit a total you are off to the run… I see the future of racing going virtual
I like this idea, no issues of crashes, flat tires, etc. They could set the trainers up outside too, just for some degree of quasi-realism. You’re done when you’ve produced X kw-hrs on the trainer.
You could have it in a stadium then and get better TV spots. Maybe run on treadmills? Then to add some additional degree of difficulty and take racing strategy out even further maybe do sets of burpees in between. Maybe we can call it cross-fit?
maybe a suggestion to possible anti draft solutions…
bikes on a trainer measuring watts, once you hit a total you are off to the run… I see the future of racing going virtual
I like this idea, no issues of crashes, flat tires, etc. They could set the trainers up outside too, just for some degree of quasi-realism. You’re done when you’ve produced X kw-hrs on the trainer.
You could have it in a stadium then and get better TV spots. Maybe run on treadmills? Then to add some additional degree of difficulty and take racing strategy out even further maybe do sets of burpees in between. Maybe we can call it cross-fit?
Ya, and we could set up a pool in the stadium to do the swim, and it would be accurate for once and no need for wetsuits. If the bikes and trainers were provided, you wouldn’t even need a bike. I think the run should be on the track though, as long as you have accurate chip timing.
Still not going to be very exciting on TV though:)
maybe a suggestion to possible anti draft solutions…
bikes on a trainer measuring watts, once you hit a total you are off to the run… I see the future of racing going virtual
I like this idea, no issues of crashes, flat tires, etc. They could set the trainers up outside too, just for some degree of quasi-realism. You’re done when you’ve produced X kw-hrs on the trainer.
Good read, and great research. Good thing about your article is the summary. The money is providing an decent testing program and it’s then about fine tuning details, not needing an testing overhaul.
there are 2 issues outstanding. one revolves around results management, and i suspect i might write a short follow up piece on that. the other is about reporting. i got an email from starky a little while ago saying, “whaddya mean i’m not getting tested, i got tested at…” and then he listed 6 or 8 places. but of course that’s probably WTC testing him, because USADA reports only the tests where it’s the results manager. we need WTC to do the same and it would be nice of there was a central dbase for this, in the U.S. for at least USADA and WTC, hopefully other testing authorities, and not just per athlete but per test, that is, starky was tested this many times, and then per test it’s a check in the column for urine, blood, HGH, EPO, bio passport analysis, IC, OOC. WTC would look very good with a spreadsheet like this, because every test it does is a comprehensive test.
now, it’s possible that starky did get tested by USADA and USADA just didn’t test the sample. uli brought this up in FB comments appending to the article. did all the samples taken get tested? my guess is yes, but i did not ask that question.
This may be more a tangent, but question involving the fretta doping. So he raced wts Dan Diego, retired, unretired to take the sanctions in mid June of 2012. What took so long for it to be released? I think the usada date was nov 2012. Was that because he was no longer going to be active athlete or, normal processing procedures?
Would that be a standard time delay for announcing any doping sanction?
“This may be more a tangent, but question involving the fretta doping. So he raced wts Dan Diego, retired, unretired to take the sanctions in mid June of 2012. What took so long for it to be released?”
fretta was “provisionally suspended” in june 2012, and he was formally banned in november of 2012. that’s not a long time. that’s just the time it takes to work a case. because the rules call for a provisional ban once you are noticed to have possibly doped (returning an A sample positive, for example) you kind of, for all intents, are banned. just, nobody gets to know about it, because you’re granted privacy during your hearings.
but his results were erased back to 2010. so in a way it was kind of a 6yr ban. it’s 4 years from june, 2012, but the results back to 2010 were wiped out. the reason is because this was a bio passport violation. that’s my understanding. they started noticing “changes in biological parameters that may be indicative of doping.” so, you’re considered to have doped retroactive to the time your blood started to make the machine go boing.
I guess I was more wondering the “no one gets to know about it”, especially portaining to an active athlete (fretta retired immediately after wts San Diego).
The whole how does an athlete disguise that I guess is what I’m wondering. Injury/flu etc (or just going off radar) while dealing with the issues. Use that timeline on say an IM athlete, and he misses 2 world champs.
I guess I’m more wondering the mental side of it. What reasoning would athlete say for his disappearance? Would they even talk about it or just go silent, not answer any questions.
Or I may have it wrong. Athletes can choose to race during “provisional” ban correct? It would just eliminate results and likely cause new doping ban date, I think?
Eta: nevermind they are banned at notification of provisional sanctioning.
“I guess I was more wondering the “no one gets to know about it”, especially portaining to an active athlete (fretta retired immediately after wts San Diego).”
i’m not sure if this is what you’re asking about, and i don’t remember much about this, but if you have an analytic positive you begin a process. the two hallmarks of that process that matter to you and me are: 1) no public disclosure will be made of your positive sample, and nobody will know about the proceedings until they’re all done and you’ve been handed a ban; 2) you are not allowed to race during that time, and that will extend to run, swim and bike events, that is, if you are in a doping process in tri, the IFs of swim, bike and run are informed as well as all relevant organizations in triathlon.
this means that if somebody is “injured” or taking time off or spending time with his family or whatever, this might invite (privately, not here on this forum) speculation whether this time out is as advertised or whether there’s an anti-doping process ongoing.
I don’t know for sure, but I would consider “targeted” testing the type of testing that is essentially directed at a single athlete who might be thought to be breaking some rules. Does that make sense?
Otherwise, your blog posts highlights a lot of what Dan’s article says among other things. One is results management. You took a survey of some pros. I can send you my counts if you want to add to it. There is a way to see who was tested via USADA’s site, but not whether it was in/out of competition. There is not yet a way to see who was tested via WTC, either in/out of competition. Some of us subject to whereabouts, the two living under our roof, are subject to testing by either WTC or USADA/USAT but are NOT listed on the WTC testing pool.
Yes, I see what you’re saying. I was just using “targeted” in the sense that almost all of the tests are being conducted on a relatively small portion of the pro athlete population. The larger point I was trying to make was that an overwhelming majority of pro athletes are not tested. So even if a company says “We conducted X tests on Y athletes”, you have to take those numbers with a grain of salt.
In my personal opinion, an athlete should have to take a test to accept prize money. And once they’ve won prize money, they should be in the out-of-competition pool. So still “targeted” testing, but a bit larger target than is currently in place.
It seems that the USADA list of who’s tested could contribute to the rumors of, “xxxxx is under investigation.” I can’t imagine it’s comfortable for non-ITU athletes to have a lot of tests by their name–especially for those not on the podium much.
If they aren’t in fact under investigation/suspicion, I’d like to hear more about why they’re tested so frequently. And if they are under investigation/suspicion, it seems like a pretty big leak of the investigation to list this.
Which all means I’m not sure how I feel about those testing numbers being released–especially when we don’t have the context of the WTC tests. As you noted about Starky, the WTC numbers may make the USADA numbers not look high at all.
the great majority of the time the numbers are high next to an athlete because he or she has reached a level of competence where they need to be in the registered testing pool. so, they’re the americans near the front of the ITU rankings, 70.3 rankings, KPR points and so forth. so, having a lot of tests next to andy potts’ name, or gwen jorgenson or hunter kemper makes a lot of sense. i’d like to know what we had in mind if these athletes had not undergone a lot of tests.
if you look at the success of some of these athletes in recent years, heather jackson and tim o’donnell, why would we expect them to NOT be in the RTP?
now, let’s consider the reverse. let’s say some of these athletes are winning a lot and they have no tests next to them. do you think this makes the athlete feel good? don’t you think these athletes would rather have a lot of numbers next to their names, so that they can point and say, here, i’m getting tested a lot?
if we don’t see the names published we lose transparency in the program and that means we lose faith in the program. i say we publish more, not less, of what testing is occurring.
Great article in the first place, thanks!
Did you ask Wtc and Usada what their reckoning is that for each person they catch, how many do not get cought? I mean it would be quite naive to think that all offenders are getting cought.
the great majority of the time the numbers are high next to an athlete because he or she has reached a level of competence where they need to be in the registered testing pool. so, they’re the americans near the front of the ITU rankings, 70.3 rankings, KPR points and so forth. so, having a lot of tests next to andy potts’ name, or gwen jorgenson or hunter kemper makes a lot of sense. i’d like to know what we had in mind if these athletes had not undergone a lot of tests.
if you look at the success of some of these athletes in recent years, heather jackson and tim o’donnell, why would we expect them to NOT be in the RTP?
now, let’s consider the reverse. let’s say some of these athletes are winning a lot and they have no tests next to them. do you think this makes the athlete feel good? don’t you think these athletes would rather have a lot of numbers next to their names, so that they can point and say, here, i’m getting tested a lot?
if we don’t see the names published we lose transparency in the program and that means we lose faith in the program. i say we publish more, not less, of what testing is occurring.
i didn’t ask them that. i would imagine that’s a fairly easy stat to generate, you look at WADA’s annual reports, you look at those each entity has popped, you get a sense. but i don’t know how relevant that is. if the efforts at anti-doping are getting better and that dissuades people from doping, then the stats change. but we can’t ask for a show of hands, how many of you would be doping but you’re too afraid of getting caught?