With the recent focus on the anti-doping whereabouts systems for athletes such as Christian Coleman and Salwa Eid Naser, speaking to an athlete with experience of the system seemed wise.

Dan Lawson isn’t your standard professional athlete, but after winning the European 24hr Championships in 2016 the Sussex native was popped onto a list with some of the more famous names. It was a shock to us at management level that our athlete would be included, but Dan took it into his stride. The very unique stride that it is.

Before getting into Dan’s own experience about how he managed to be at the right location for his hour 365 times in a year and also being tested seven times, let’s look at the system itself.

The way it works

Top tier athletes, from national level athletes to the likes of Olympic gold medallists and world champions, have to file their whereabouts with their national anti-doping body. For one hour a day they must give a location at which they are available for testing.  Their location is listed for the whole day, but the single hour is when they must be available for testing or fail their whereabouts.

Miss three tests in a twelve month period and you’re up for a ban. It’s pretty generous. As a clean athlete, you’d be horrified, but life happens and it can simply be a mistake.

Miss two tests (in just a 12 month period) and, as a clean athlete, you’d be absolutely gutted that it got so close. You’d make sure that there was zero chance of missing another.

Which is why when someone misses three tests we shouldn’t just put them down as disorganised, as someone who isn’t good at keeping a diary, but as someone who has an anti-doping rule violation. Just like we treat the other anti-doping rule violators. Two missed tests is generous, three is a triple get out of jail free card for a doper.

But they were tested 1000 times that year…

Why care about out of competition tests when some of these athletes are tested multiple times in competition each year?

They say that the in-competition test is more of an IQ test. With athletes and doctors knowing when they will likely be “glowing” (vulnerable to a positive test from a substance’s presence in their body), it’s relatively simple to not test positive on race day.

One imagines that even out of competition testing is a case of taking a small enough dose each evening, outside of the testing window, that it’s out of your system in the morning, so called “micro-dosing”.

So for anti-doping authorities to know where an athlete is, for one hour of every day, and be able to test them, isn’t really a huge ask for transparency.

Although some days Dan Lawson may have a tracker on him 24/7 when racing, the rest of the time it’s normally difficult for anyone to find him.

Bring in Mr. Lawson.

Dan Lawson, whilst an absolutely lovely human being, isn’t someone you’d imagine keeps a strict diary. As his coach I can say that the filling in of a training diary is a rare and unusual occurrence. He likes to sleep on the beach, spend months in a time in India and go on hours and hours of long runs on the trails.

“It wasn’t easy. It was actually really hard to keep everything up to date, especially when in places without good quality internet,” recalls Lawson.

In the course of 12 months on the whereabouts scheme the British international made sure he was in the right place, at the right time, for every one of his hour slots.

“At one point I was working at Glastonbury,” laughs the 24hr runner. “And the officers insisted they could go to the front gate and would be let in because they were drug testers. I was working 18 hour days so to make sure I was available I found a pub four miles from the festival and each lunch break I ran there, waited outside for an hour, then ran back.”

“They never came, but I always made sure I was there for the full hour. I actually lost some work because we couldn’t find a one hour slot for the whereabouts.”

Missed opportunities

Okay, so it was only one year for the then 45 year old amateur athlete, but there were still six out of competition tests within that year. One of those tests was in a rural area of India, but still Lawson was at the rather imaginatively named address when the anti-doping agent arrived. He always was.

“There was one time when someone offered me a last minute ticket to an England U17s game and I would loved to have gone, but the internet bandwidth in India wasn’t good enough to change at the last minute, so I missed out. I wasn’t taking any chances. Part of this was how a missed test would look on my whole 24hr team. I didn’t want to let my teammates down at all.”

If it was your professional job, as part of a career of being a full time athlete, then surely filling in your whereabouts is a sometimes arduous, but important part of that.

World class race walker Evan Dunfee puts it like this “Filling out whereabouts is definitely a chore, but it’s a tiny task in the grand scheme of what we sign up for as athletes.”

“I get that mistakes happen, they’ve happened to me,” says the Canadian, “and that those mistakes are more likely to burn you the more often you’re tested but unless everyone plays by the same rules the game just simply isn’t fair.”

So much so that you’d unlikely fuck it up not once, not twice, but three times in a calendar year. You’d make sure the system that alerted you to someone’s presence at the door was working or that you didn’t wander down the shops for your one hour a day.

Why we must see it like a failed test

Now think of this from a doper’s point of view. In the days of micro-dosing and new unknown substances, with the right medical team a cheating athlete might feel uncatchable. Add in the safety net of not one, but two missed tests. You never fail the test you don’t take.

Imagine if you’re doping and have all three strikes available for the 12 months ahead. You dope and instead of making sure you’re in the right place, make sure you’re not. “Oops, sorry I missed a test”.

If you’re a clean athlete, you accept the fact that three missed tests means you’re dirty. If you’re a dirty athlete you see the missed tests as a way out.

Even look at the difference in how athletes who miss tests are treated compared to those who fail for a recreational substance like cocaine or marijuana. If your choices are “get busted for EPO” or “get busted for poor diary keeping” you know which one looks better on the CV.

Maybe it’s different for individual athletes, but Lawson feels a strong responsibility for his team too. As a squad we have an UKAD anti-doping educator and try to help our athletes make informed choices around supplements.

Should we be harsher on those who miss tests?

We cannot simply say that those who miss three tests are doping. There are many factors at play and the real dopers will play into the fact that there is doubt in the system. They will appeal to the better nature of those who don’t feel the need to cheat.

One simple way is to treat those who commit anti-doping rule violations at the same level. It might seem harsh to compare someone caught taking all the drugs in the world to an athlete who wasn’t in the right place at the same time, but three missed tests in a 12 month period is quite generous.

There are flaws, and cases where the doping control officer has knocked at the wrong house or not stayed for the full hour, banging on the athlete’s door to make sure they make it home in time, but that is balanced out by stories of doping control officers calling ahead and the fact that most don’t want an athlete to miss their test. It’s their job to test them, not play hide and seek.

So next time someone describes the system as “unfair” and “overwhelming” when they miss three tests remember this: there’s 1000s of clean athletes who don’t find the whereabouts system too much to handle.

If  Dan Lawson can be in the right place, at the right time every day,  then trust me, no one should be missing three tests in a year unless they want to.

The post Three strikes and out appeared first on Fast Running.

Keynan athlete Samuel Kalalei has been banned for four years after testing for blood-booster EPO.

Kalalei tested positive after the Rotterdam marathon in April, where he clocked a personal best 2:10:44 to finish seventh.

The 23-year-old, who has a half marathon PB of 65:38, was provisionally suspended by Athletics Integrity Unit in June.

In November 2017, Kalalei won the Athens Marathon in a time of 2:12:17.

It is a further damaging blow to Keyna’s standing as a leading force in distance running around the world.

A World Anti-Doping Agency report said that since 2004, a total of 138 Kenyan athletes have tested positive for banned substances, with 18 athletes currently suspended for anti-doping breaches.

Two months ago, Athletics Kenya officials confirmed that middle-distance runner Kipyegon Bett, who beat Great Britain’s Kyle Langford to a medal at the World Championships last year, tested positive for EPO.

In May, fellow Kenyan athlete Asbel Kiprop, the 2008 Olympic gold medalist in Bejing and three-time world champion over 1500m, tested positive for EPO in an out of competition test but denied any wrongdoing.

Last year, Olympic marathon champion Jemima Sumgong received a four-year ban.

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Athletics Kenya officials have confirmed on Friday (August 24) that middle-distance runner Kipyegon Bett has tested positive for EPO.

At World Championships in London last year Bett finished just ahead of GB’s Kyle Langford to clinch the bronze medal in the 800m final.

According to Reuters, AK executive committee member, Barnabas Korir, said the body received notification from the Athletics Integrity Unit (AIU) on Thursday that Bett had submitted a positive sample for the banned blood booster.

The 20-year-old, who is currently serving a provisional suspension for failing to submit to sample collection on August 15, is now awaiting tests on a B sample.

“We had submitted defence for the case of ‘refusing or failing to submit to sample collection’ by today’s (Friday) deadline,” said Korir. But last night, we received another notification about the new (EPO) case.

“We have kicked off due process, accorded to every athlete as per the rules set by AIU. If the second test confirms the first one, then the athlete will have to face full consequences of the (anti-doping) law.”

In May, fellow Kenyan athlete Asbel Kiprop, the 2008 Olympic gold medalist in Bejing and three-time world champion over 1500m in 2011, 2013 and 2015 tested positive for EPO in an out of competition test but denied any wrongdoing.

RELATED: ‘Don’t add one and one together and get two thousand doping Kenyans’

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The news on Morocco’s removal from the ‘watch list’, came on day two of the 212th IAAF Council meeting in Monaco.

Taking the nation off the list was recommended by the Athlete Integrity Unit (AIU) with the IAAF Council approving the move.

Back in March 2016, Morocco was placed on a watch list along with Kenya, Ethiopia, Ukraine and Belarus by the IAAF. At the time Sebastian Coe stared that “Ethiopia and Morocco, as a matter of urgency, need a robust testing programme put in place, Kenya, Ukraine and Belarus need to get compliant by the end of the year.”

The wording implies that there was not a sufficient testing programme in place in Morocco at the time of the addition to the watch list. Following Morocco’s removal, it would be of interest to hear the measures and actions that have taken place to warrant the country’s removal, compared to the others, that still remain.

It was reported that Morocco and Ethiopia needed to “appoint an anti-doping coordinator and, as a matter of urgency, establish a national testing programme.” Has this been undertaken by Morocco but not Ethiopia?

Whilst fully in support of the IAAF taking action to combat doping within athletics, it would be beneficial for more transparency in the process, given that a vast majority of the distance running World Records are held by three of the nations that were mentioned above.

Transparency is a key factor in establishing trust in our sport, especially given corruption scandals and state-backed doping within the sporting world in recent years. If countries are improving their anti-doping work then we should be hearing about it, but would that involve revealing just how little was done beforehand?

The IAAF news release states that “Belarus, Ethiopia, Kenya and Ukraine will remain on the list and a new set of requirements for these four federations will be prepared based upon their anti-doping activities in 2017. Monitoring of the compliance with those requirements will be made by the AIU Board who will report back to Council.”

What were the original requirements that were set once the federations went onto the list? Were they not met? Was it always a longer term goal to have these countries compliant and Morocco had less to do or did Morocco pull out all the stops compared to the others?

Russian transparency

The situation with the Russian Federation and the IAAF’s Task Force, led by Rune Andersen, has produced an in-depth report on the progress made so far. Verification criteria has been set out and “most, but not all, has been met.

Of the five remaining conditions in the roadmap, one has been fully met to date (support for the Clean Sport Movement), two others have only been partly met (satisfactory testing, and a solution to the problem of enforcement of provisional suspensions of coaches), and two have not been met at all (acknowledgement of McLaren findings; reinstatement of RUSADA).”

However, one must question whether the high levels of transparency within this particular case is down to the excellent investigative journalism by the likes of Hajo Seppelt and Bryan Fogel, forcing the hand of the organisations now investigating the situation. Would this investigation be as open if it hadn’t been forced into the open? Would it have been happening at all?

The Russians may be the favourite ‘bogeymen’ of World Sport at the moment, but they’re certainly not the only country doping and you’d be naive to think they’re the only country with a large, state-wide program or controls in place. It’s great that we know what is being done about this, but what about the other countries on that watch list?

What is the great progress Morocco has made to be removed from the IAAF watch list? Have they been catching more athletes? Is there satisfactory testing in place and how does it compare to what was there before?

A clean sport needs transparency, even if that means embarrassing those in charge by highlighting what has been missed or swept under the carpet in the past. Ego must be set aside, for the good of our sport.

The post Why was Morocco removed from IAAF doping ‘watch list’? appeared first on Fast Running.

Now there are some who have pointed out recently that many aspects of anti-doping have become a PR exercise, rather than a “catching cheats” exercise. It’s the perception that each country has of being clean, whilst catching a few “bad eggs”, rather than stopping higher level (systematic?) doping and, heaven forbid, having your country look like a bunch of cheats.

There is certainly a difference between ‘doing’ a good job and ‘appearing’ to do a good job. Much like when statistics within areas such as law enforcement or a company’s pollution can be misleading. Is there a possibility that testing figures follow a similar pattern?

WADA report

Firstly, one thing that is made clear on WADA’s report on the figures, although not really reported in the press, is that these are testing figures and positive tests, but these do not necessarily mean an Anti-Doping Rule Violation (ADRV) has taken place. It could be that a TUE is in place for the substance and it’s not until 2018 that we see the ADRV report for 2016, once all the cases have been, rightly, heard.

There are also all those unfortunate cases where athletes were passionately kissing girlfriends, who just so happened to be eating contaminated Chinese beef that they stole from the Olympic Village in Beijing. These are in the testing figures, but obviously, this is no fault of the athlete, like when you leave all your cocaine in your wash bag before a tennis tournament.

Updated banned list

The other report published by WADA in October each year is the updated banned list. It outlines the new naughty drugs and ones that we previously thought might be helpful, but are actually now determined to be useless.

This year alcohol, not really helpful in any racing situation, and glycerol, which was considered to help with hyper-hydration, were removed, although thankfully The International Federations of Air Sports, Archery, Automobile, and Powerboating will still have the authority to decide on those ones themselves.

You could try to look at both the 2017 and 2018 lists and try to figure out what’s in and what’s out, but fortunately, WADA provides a summary of the modifications made.

Even athletes of the calibre of Maria Sharapova forget to check what’s changed and get their wrists slapped when their heart medication is listed as a banned performance-enhancing substance. So are we doing enough to publicise these changes to athletes and coaches?

IV infusions

The other interesting change in the 2018 WADA code is with regards to the use of intravenous (IV) infusions. Here’s the wording of WADA’s Summary:

“M2.2: the permitted volume and timing of intravenous infusions were changed from infusions of no more than 50 mL per 6-hour period to no more than a total of 100 mL per 12-hour period in order to allow greater flexibility for the safe administration of non-prohibited therapeutic substances, for example, iron.”

Now, I may have received a U (later upgraded to an E after retests) at AS Maths, but 50mL per 6 hour period actually allows for 100mL per 12 hour period. So what’s going on here? Apparently, it’s “in order to allow greater flexibility for the safe administration of non-prohibited therapeutic substances, for example, iron”.

Now we all know as athletes that not being able to inject our 100mls of iron in one go is a major pain… oh wait, no! How many athletes do you know that are regularly injecting supplements in large enough doses as to be inconvenienced by this? Is this what elite sport is these days?

If cycling has taught us anything (other than that biceps are basically unnecessary) it’s that injections becoming normality is a slippery slope. Many a doping story within cycling’s annals starts with the regular vitamin injections, legal infusions to just ‘level the playing field’.

There are athletes that need TUEs for medical grounds and certain circumstances where IVs of greater than 100ml per 12 hours are needed e.g. “except for those legitimately received in the course of hospital treatment, surgical procedures, or clinical diagnostic investigations”. Aside from this, do we really need to be widening the possibilities of benefiting from injected supplements and infusions? Are we not increasing the grey area, rather than making the rules easier to enforce?

Timing is everything

The only cases where the timing and numbers of infusions have arisen recently was in the FBI’s investigation into Alberto Salazar’s coaching methods, and the parliamentary culture, media and sport select committee, chaired by MP Damian Collins when discussing one of Salazar’s British athletes receiving unknown levels of infusions of L-Carnitine.

It’s quite a coincidence that whilst these investigations are ongoing, one of the major areas in which foul play is suspected is being changed.

This rule change may actually prevent doping figures from increasing, by making something that was once illegal, legal, but will it reduce doping in sport?

In the long term could relaxation of these rules lead to more athletes becoming comfortable with regular needles and that particular pathway from the grey area to outright cheating?

Is Anti-doping becoming a PR exercise in the battle against cheats? Considering that convincing the next generation of athletes that they can win clean is vital to progression, after scandals with regards to Russia and, now, China, is this the only path left?

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