Ath­lete drug test­ing is based on sev­er­al ob­jec­tive pa­ra­me­ters that en­sure there is a rea­son­able, non-sub­jec­tive ra­tio­nale for each dop­ing con­trol test. These ob­jec­tive pa­ra­me­ters in­clude, but are not lim­it­ed to, fi­nan­cial gains, the as­so­ci­a­tion of dop­ing vi­o­la­tions with a sport or ath­lete, ath­lete pop­u­lar­i­ty or in­tel­li­gence re­ceived. Ath­letes as­so­ci­at­ed with sport where the fi­nan­cial gain is min­i­mal, ath­letes who are not well known, or a sport with very lit­tle as­so­ci­a­tion with dop­ing vi­o­la­tions will at­tract less dop­ing con­trol test­ing.

Ef­fect of the Pan­dem­ic

The cur­rent sit­u­a­tion has caused a re­duc­tion in train­ing and com­pe­ti­tion ac­tiv­i­ties in sport. There are cur­rent­ly lit­tle prospects of fi­nan­cial gains for ath­letes and the risk of COVID-19 in­fec­tion as­so­ci­at­ed with dop­ing con­trol test­ing is high. Both dop­ing con­trol per­son­nel and ath­letes are at risk of in­fec­tion which may lead to a cas­cade of le­gal im­pli­ca­tion. At this time, an­ti-dop­ing or­gan­i­sa­tions must con­sid­er the risk ver­sus the ra­tio­nale for test­ing each ath­lete. So far, this has been tak­en in­to con­sid­er­a­tion and un­der the in­struc­tions of the World An­ti-Dop­ing Agency (WA­DA), an­ti-dop­ing or­gan­i­sa­tions have de­creased or ceased drug test­ing.

Does This Mean Free to Cheat Sea­son?

It is, how­ev­er, im­por­tant to con­sid­er that giv­en the an­tic­i­pa­tion of the re­sump­tion of com­pe­ti­tion, ath­letes may now be more com­pelled to try al­ter­nate meth­ods of get­ting back to peak per­for­mance.

Robert Gold­man has demon­strat­ed the ex­tent ath­letes would go to gain a com­pet­i­tive ad­van­tage.

He re­port­ed that ap­prox­i­mate­ly 50 per cent of elite ath­letes, when asked, said they would take drugs if it would guar­an­tee wins, even if that drug would kill them in five years.

One should nev­er as­sume the guilt or in­no­cence of any ath­lete. But how do we, dur­ing COVID-19, ob­jec­tive­ly con­firm?

Amend­ments to the sam­ple col­lec­tion pro­ce­dures to lim­it the de­gree of phys­i­cal con­tact be­tween sam­ple col­lec­tors and ath­letes is cer­tain­ly war­rant­ed.

What’s New?

WA­DA has re­leased an an­ti-dop­ing or­gan­i­sa­tion pol­i­cy guid­ance for the re­sump­tion of test­ing dur­ing COVID-19. The guid­ance takes in­to con­sid­er­a­tion the re­stric­tions in force in each in­di­vid­ual coun­try.

The re­sump­tion of test­ing should take in­to con­sid­er­a­tion the avail­abil­i­ty of per­son­al pro­tec­tive equip­ment, the re­sump­tion of com­pe­ti­tion and the sta­tus of the lab that tests the sam­ples. Giv­en the lim­it­ed num­ber of com­pe­ti­tions across the world, an­ti-dop­ing or­gan­i­sa­tions should fo­cus on out of com­pe­ti­tion test­ing at the ath­lete’s pre­ferred lo­ca­tion (usu­al­ly home or train­ing camp). The new guide­lines al­so rec­om­mend lim­it­ing the num­ber of dop­ing con­trol per­son­nel. Oc­ca­sion­al­ly, an ath­lete’s urine and blood sam­ple are col­lect­ed. This re­quires the pres­ence of ad­di­tion­al per­son­nel—blood col­lec­tion of­fi­cers. By col­lect­ing urine sam­ples on­ly, for now, the num­ber of dop­ing con­trol per­son­nel may be lim­it­ed. If blood sam­ple is to be col­lect­ed, it must be jus­ti­fied by in­tel­li­gence or lim­it­ed to sport with a high risk of dop­ing such as high en­durance events (cy­cling, marathon etc).

At this point, on­ly ‘high-risk ath­letes’ should be test­ed. De­ter­mi­na­tion of who is a ‘high-risk ath­lete’ in­volves the sport, their in­clu­sion in the reg­is­tered test­ing pool, and, of course, in­tel­li­gence. Once the de­ci­sion is made to test an ath­lete, dop­ing con­trol per­son­nel must be pro­vid­ed per­son­al pro­tec­tive equip­ment such as gloves face mask and dis­in­fec­tants/sani­tis­ers. Ex­cept for face masks, these are usu­al­ly used. Of­fi­cials must al­so en­sure that where pos­si­ble, they main­tain a min­i­mum phys­i­cal dis­tance of one me­ter. When ob­serv­ing the col­lec­tion of urine or blood sam­ples, ex­cep­tions must be made.

Sam­ple col­lec­tion per­son­nel must be re­trained to en­sure the new guide­lines are ad­hered to dur­ing the col­lec­tion of bi­o­log­i­cal sam­ples. Con­sid­er­a­tions must al­so be made re­gard­ing the of­fi­cials who are en­gaged to col­lect sam­ples.

Of­fi­cials who are health care pro­fes­sion­als, con­tacts of COVID-19 pa­tients, dis­play symp­toms, have un­der­ly­ing med­ical con­di­tions, or those over 60 years of age are at-risk groups and, as such, as far as pos­si­ble, should not be used to col­lect sam­ples.

Fi­nal­ly, an ed­u­ca­tion pro­gramme must be de­vel­oped to keep the pub­lic and es­pe­cial­ly the ath­letes up to date re­gard­ing all changes while the an­ti-dop­ing or­gan­i­sa­tions slow­ly phase in­to nor­mal dop­ing con­trol test­ing.

Be­fore col­lect­ing sam­ples, an­ti-dop­ing or­gan­i­sa­tions should en­sure ath­letes com­plete a COVID-19 ques­tion­naire and re­ceive a COVID-19 in­for­ma­tion let­ter, both of which have been de­vel­oped by WA­DA and can eas­i­ly be adopt­ed by na­tion­al an­ti-dop­ing or­gan­i­sa­tions.

It is ex­pect­ed that these new guide­lines will pos­si­bly be need­ed for years to come and should be ac­cept­ed as the new nor­mal for drug test­ing.

While we un­der­stand the sig­nif­i­cance of drug test­ing, even dur­ing this pe­ri­od, we must ac­knowl­edge that the health of the ath­letes and sam­ple col­lec­tion per­son­nel is top pri­or­i­ty.

Dr Aldeam Facey can be reached at Aldeam.Facey02@uwi­mona.edu.jm