As Marin Cilic lifted the US Open title two weeks ago, it
capped a remarkable turnaround in fortunes for the Croatian. Just fifteen
months ago, he had withdrawn from Wimbledon through injury, although it later
emerged that this was a cover for a failed drugs test in Munich earlier in the
year. Cilic had tested positive for nikethamide, which appears on the WADA list
of prohibited substances. After being given a nine month ban, he appealed to
CAS, blaming his mother for buying the wrong glucose tablets, who then reduced
the ban to four months.
Along with the Viktor Troicki case, where he was banned for
18 months, reduced to twelve, for refusing to take a blood test, which he
blames on confusing instruction from the tester, it raised questions about drug
testing in tennis and whether it matches up to, not only what fans of the sport
might expect, but also to the levels of testing in other sports.
Before we delve deep down into the figures, we can look at
the headlines numbers. In 2013, WADA-accredited laboratories tested 4,154
samples in tennis, spread across a number of different types of tests. This
compared with 3,990 samples in 2012 – an increase in tests of 4.1%. In terms of
the percentage of all of the basic samples tested across every Olympic sport, tennis
represents just 1.97%.
Of these 4,154 samples, there were 15 that returned atypical
findings and 14 that returned adverse analytical findings. Combining those, we
find that 0.70% of samples returned either atypical or adverse analytical
findings.
So, we have those headlines figures, but without comparison
figures for other sports, they do not tell us a great deal. Taking the figures
for 14 other sports, we can compile the following pie chart, representing the
total number of samples taken in each of these sports.
As we can see, of these 15 Olympic sports, tennis does not
come out looking particularly impressive. As a sport, there were fewer samples
collected than there were in judo, triathlon and skating among others. Indeed,
the only sports that collected fewer samples than tennis were handball,
ice-hockey and boxing.
Football, as expected due to the sheer number of
participants, shows up highly, but it is noticeable that cycling and athletics
both conduct a very high number of tests. They are sports that have caught out
major participants in recent years – Alberto Contador in cycling and Asafa
Powell, Tyson Gay, Justin Gatlin and many others in athletics. Is doping more
prevalent in those sports or does the fact that they conduct so many more tests
simply mean that they do better at detecting dopers?
Now we have seen that tennis does not necessarily show up
particularly well on these figures, let us delve more deeply into the type of
tests that are conduct in both tennis and in our other 14 comparison sports.
Of the 4,154 samples collected in 2013, we see that 67.9% of
those were basic urine tests, 15.8% were blood tests, 3.4% were GC/C/IRMS
tests, 3.9% were EPO tests and 9.0% were HBOC and HBT tests. To explain these
in slightly more detail, the urine and blood tests are fairly self-explanatory.
The GC/C/IRMS test stands for gas
chromatograph/carbon/isotope ratio mass spectrometer tests and can be used to
ascertain the relative ratios of certain isotopes of elements in compounds. The
ratio of these elements can vary based on certain biological processes and can
be used to flag up any non-natural or adverse reactions to certain chemicals or
medication that an athlete might have used.
 |
| Marin Cilic lifted the US Open a mere 15 months after testing positive for a banned substance |
EPO is a form of blood doping that, among other effects,
leads to increased hermatocrit, allowing for greater oxygen carrying capacity
in the blood. HBOC is similar in that they are intra/inter-molecularly
engineered human hemoglobins, optimised for oxygen delivery and longer
intravascular circulation, while HBT stands for homologous blood transfusions,
which increases the number of red blood cells, increasing your oxygen carrying
capacity.
So how does this match up to other sports? In terms of the
percentage and number of blood tests, tennis actually shows up very well. Out
of our other comparison sports, the second highest percentage of blood tests is
rugby with just 5.7%. In terms of the raw numbers, only football, athletics and
cycling conducted more blood tests in 2013.
Naturally, this particularly high percentage of blood tests
means that the percentage of urine tests is significantly below the other
sports, but given that blood tests are generally viewed as more advanced and
more likely to detect doping, this is no bad thing.
In terms of GC/C/IRMS tests, the 3.4% in tennis falls behind
just ice hockey and boxing in our comparison sports, although the 3.9% of EPO
tests lag significantly behind a number of other sports, including cycling,
swimming, skiing, skating and triathlon, all of which have double figure
percentages here. However, this could represent a difference in views between
those sports and tennis as to what forms of doping might be most prevalent in
their sports.
It was interesting that tennis did not conduct a single test
for hGH (hGH isoform differential immunoassays) in 2013 – the only sport in our
sample that did not use this form of testing. However, the 9.0% of HBOC and HBT
tests dwarfs any other sport – boxing is the second highest percentage with
just 2.3% - and the raw figures back this up with no other sport conducting
more HBOC tests than tennis.
Now that we have broken the tests down into greater detail,
how about comparing the ratios of in-competition testing and out-of-competition
testing. Generally, out-of-competition testing is likely to detect the greatest
number of dopers given that athletes would coordinate their doping to avoid
testing positive during competitions. We only have to look at the micro-doping
and strict doping schedules that Lance Armstrong and the US Postal Team
followed to see that in-competition doping is not all that effective.
Of the 4,154 samples collected in 2013 for tennis, 73.2% of
samples were collected in-competition compared to 26.8% collected
out-of-competition. This compares to an average over all Olympic sports of
59.0% of in-competition samples and 59.4% across our sample of 15 sports.
Of our sample, only football (77.9%) collects more of its
samples in-competition than tennis with sports such as cycling (62.1%),
athletics (54.8%) and swimming (49.4%) all doing significantly more work in
collecting out-of-competition samples.
Overall, there is a picture emerging that tennis could do
far more in terms of structuring its drug testing to enhance their chances of
catching dopers. How has it improved between 2012 and 2013 though?
As we saw earlier, there was an increase of 4.1% in terms of
the overall number of samples collected in 2013 compared with 2012. If we look
more closely at the breakdown, we find that the number of urine tests has
actually significantly decreased between 2012 and 2013, falling by 15.8%. The
big rise has come in the blood testing – in 2012, tennis collected just 166
blood samples, compared with 657 in 2013. This is an encouraging sign if tennis
is starting to focus more on blood testing than urine testing. The raw numbers
of urine tests still significantly outweigh those of blood tests, but it is
certainly a move in the right direction.
Tennis has also decreased the number of EPO tests that it
has conducted from 262 in 2012 to 160 in 2013 – a fall of 38.9%. It has also
completed removed hGH testing, of which it collected 147 samples in 2012.
Replacing these has been a 138% increase in GC/C/IRMS tests and a 6,150%
increase in the number of HBOC and HBT tests.
Tennis will also point to the fact that it has introduced the
blood passport system. However, this is still in its very early days. In 2012,
there were 74 samples taken for the blood passport system, which rose to 301 in
2013. However, comparing this to the 5,202 blood passport samples taken in
athletics and the 7,429 in cycling, it is clear that it still has a very long
way to go before it can start to rival the versions in the leading sports.
While this
all suggests that tennis is a long way from having a rigorous and reliable
anti-doping testing system, there are certainly some positives. The move toward
blood tests at the expense of urine tests is a step in the right direction.
While blood tests are more expensive, they are a superior form of testing. This
being a long-term move is reflected in the budget increase for anti-doping from
the ITF announced in recent weeks from $2m in 2013 up to a projected $3.1m by
2016 – an increase of 55%.
However, despite this, some of the comments from leading
figures at the ITF, their anti-doping department and leading players do raise
concerns. One in particular from Stuart Miller, the head of the ITF anti-doping
program raises a few questions:
“It may be that tennis is not conducive to
EPO. Maybe tennis is not a sport that is driven by a need to maximise stamina,
which is what EPO essentially does.”
In 2006, there were 114 samples collecting for testing for
EPO. In 2013, this had risen to 160, having bottomed out at just 21 in 2009 and
having peaked at 262 in 2012. Ignoring the fluctuations over the intervening
period, the increase in EPO tests since 2006 has been just 40.4%.
A recent study suggested that only football players log more
miles in competition than tennis players do. The average tennis player covers
between three and five miles in a five-set match, which would suggest that
stamina is very much a concern for professional tennis players.
 |
| Stuart Miller is head of the ITF anti-doping programme, but some of his comments are relatively concerning |
Frankly, if the head of the ITF anti-doping programme does
not believe that maximising stamina is an important aspect of tennis, then one
could argue that tennis has a serious problem. He is not alone though – plenty of
people think that doping is likely to be less helpful in tennis than in other
sports. They talk about the technical element of tennis being more important
than the physical aspects. While there may be some truth to this, I think it
was nicely summed up by ‘The Overrule’ on Twitter – ‘Can drugs make you hit
better volleys? No. Can they help you rush to the net after five hours in order
to make that volley you’ve been working on? Yes.’
Greater stamina will have multiple benefits – it will allow
you to keep going longer, it will allow you to get into position better later
in matches, it will even help the mental side of your game. To suggest that
there are no benefits from maximising stamina in tennis is frankly ridiculous.
However, one of the biggest problems is that there is
currently little incentive for the governing bodies in tennis to actually
detect dopers, particularly at the top levels of the game.
One only needs to look at cycling and the reputation that
the sport now has to see the damage that doping revelations can cause to a
sport. Cycling undoubtedly did have a serious problem with doping in the past,
but it is now arguably the sport that is leading the charge against illegal
drugs – it conducts the greatest number of tests and it has the most advanced
anti-doping systems. However, it is a sport that will probably forever be
viewed with great scepticism because of its history with doping.
Tennis, as with many other sports, does not currently have
this problem. It is yet to have one of its major stars fail a doping test or
come under severe, well-reasoned suspicion. If one of tennis’ leading stars
were to be revealed as a drugs cheat, would there be negative repercussions on
the sport? Almost certainly. Would it potentially lose some of its sponsors,
some of its negotiating power? Quite likely.
Based on this, there is an argument that until a sport
develops a public problem with doping, it has little incentive to catch dopers
itself. Particularly in a sport such as tennis where the governing body is also
the same body that runs the anti-doping programme, there is a potential
conflict of interest. Doping in cycling was only really exposed publically by excellent
investigative work from journalist, unconnected to the UCI. Could it be that
similar work could be the only way to expose any doping problem that might
exist in tennis?
To conclude, are anti-doping testing and measures in tennis
sufficient at the current moment? Probably not. Are they moving in the right
direction? Certainly, over the past 12 months, there could well be an argument
that they may well be. There has been a worrying lack of progress over the past
decade, but there are small signs that things might be improving. Could more be
done? Absolutely.