WADA Anti-Doping Testing Findings 2013

Aoibheann

I spotted this BBC article this morning and thought the findings might be of interest to some of you here. Of course, the BBC focused specifically on the adverse analytical findings of the testing, but I thought it was worth finding the specific WADA reports to see just how much testing actually goes into each sport, and how cycling compares. The set of reports with testing figures for 2013 can be found here, and is broken down into Laboratory, Sports, Testing Authority and ABP.

Looking at the ABP Blood Analysis Report, you can see that there was a 31% increase in terms of tests carried out for the passport - with a total of >23,000 analysed. The famous Cologne lab (detected the tiny amount of clenbuterol in Contador's sample a few years ago, are also now using a new steroid test that found 266 positives in the past year - see here) are no slouches overall, with about 2,600 tests analysed there. Only Moscow and Lausanne analyse more.

What's more interesting, however, is looking at the proportion of ABP tests coming from cycling. Again, if you look at the ABP report, you can see that a whopping 33% of all such tests come from cycling - a total of 7,429! The UCI are also top of the testing authorities in terms of numbers, with 5,246 tests carried out in total - 2280 in competition, the remainder OOC. This was twice as many as the next nearest authority, the IAAF.

When you look at the Sport Report then, you see this trend continue. In terms of total samples analyzed in Olympic sports/disciplines, cycling accounts for 22,252 tests (beaten into third by athletics and football - presumably due to larger testing pools). It had the greatest number of EPO tests out of any discipline (7322) by far, the second most HGH tests behind athletics and was again second for blood transfusion tests.

It's reassuring, at least, to see that cycling actually is doing its best to clean up its act - well, at least compared to any other sport! I thought this might be something that the stats nerds in here would enjoy at the very least, and it does show that the UCI is making some effort. Would love to hear any thoughts anyone has on this.



(On a little side-note, the Irish Sports Council carried out a total of 44 tests for cycling (all OOC), while UK Anti-Doping had a mere 8! I thought that was rather interesting anyway!)

ZiabR

Nice post, interesting stuff for sure.

Aoibheann

I should also point out that the percentage of adverse analytical findings is 1.2% for cycling. That's considerably lower than weightlifting (3.4%), wrestling (2.3%), American football (6%!!), automobile sports (5.4%!) and, my personal favourites, billiards (3.5%) and chess (1.9%). It has a similar level to athletics, boxing, etc, but is then also higher than several others. Those findings are in pages 2-7 of the Sport Report.

kumate_champ07

american football is an entertainment business an they protect their product, the testing in their sport is a joke