OPINION: In-competition drug testing doesn’t work

For those of us who follow running closely, 2024 will be remembered for its sensational new world records, a successful Paris Olympics, and the loss of our innocence regarding in-competition drug testing.

In-competition testing has long been treated as the frontline in the battle against the sport’s significant doping problem. Superficially, it makes sense: at big events like World Marathon Majors and the Olympics, the powers that be finally have an opportunity to test many of the world’s best athletes. When the tests come back negative, we all get to tell ourselves that our sport is clean.

If only it were that simple.

Not only is this approach deeply flawed and naive, it clearly doesn’t work. In-competition testing never catches any top-level athletes. Not at the Olympics, not at the World Championships, not at the World Marathon Majors.

This has probably been true for some time. But the events of the last six months have made just how broken our system is painfully obvious.

We’ll get to those in a moment. But first, a brief history.

Ground Zero: The 1988 Olympic Men’s 100m Final

At the 1988 Seoul Olympics, I shared an apartment with Bill Dwyre, sports editor of the Los Angeles Times. Four years earlier, in 1984, the Times had provided blanket coverage of the Los Angeles Olympics.

Dwyre wanted his paper to shine again in Seoul, so he brought along a sizeable team of reporters. He even hired some South Korean locals to dig deeper and faster into Olympic goings-on than we English speakers.

One morning the apartment phone rang at 2:30 am. It was one of those South Koreans. He was calling to inform Dwyre of a breaking story. 

This is how I became one of the first journalists to learn about Ben Johnson’s failed Olympic drug test.

For those who aren’t old enough to remember, Johnson won the 100-meter gold medal over American rival Carl Lewis. But 24 hours later, Johnson’s doping test revealed a banned anabolic steroid.

It was the doping shock heard round the world, involving track and field’s most popular event and its most famous performers. Also, it seemed to prove that in-competition drug-testing could detect doping violations.

Why Are There No More Ben Johnsons?

Only it hasn’t stood the test of time. Somehow, the athletes have surged ahead of the drug testers. Far ahead.

The most famous doper of all time, Lance Armstrong, won a bronze medal in the 2000 Olympics. He easily passed his drug test. 

At the same Games, American sprint star Marion Jones won five medals (three gold, two bronze). Like Armstrong, Jones never failed a doping test. Yet she eventually confessed, again like Armstrong, to her drug abuse. 

No top finisher at a World Marathon Majors event has failed a race-day, in-competition drug test. Too many have been caught later in out-of-competition testing and/or biological passport violations (when an athlete’s various blood values show unnatural changes over time). 

What about the recent Paris Olympics? According to the International Testing Agency (with its slogan “Keeping Sports Real”), 4,770 competitors were tested during their stay in Paris. Only five failed their tests, and only one of these was a track and field competitor. 

I’ll give you a gold medal if you can name the track athlete. (Answer at bottom of column.)

The Big Doping Story of 2024

Now let’s turn to the developments of 2024. 

In May, Rodgers Kwemoi was banned for six years by the Athletics Integrity Unit. Kwemoi had finished fourth in the 2019 World Championships and seventh in the Tokyo Olympics in the 10,000m. He didn’t fail any in-competition tests at either event.

However, when the AIU reviewed his athlete biological passport, it concluded that he had likely blood doped at least 18 times. For that, he received the unusually long six-year ban.

The next month, Rhonex Kipruto, a rising distance running star who was beginning to dominate the road racing circuit, received a six-year ban. Why? Because the AIU concluded that he had engaged in “a deliberate and sophisticated doping regime.” His case included “aggravated circumstances,” like six separate requests for a hearing extension.

At the time, Kipruto was the world record holder for a road 10K (26:24) and he’d won the bronze medal in the 2019 World Champs 10,000m. Kipruto’s road 10K performance has been erased from the all-time list, and he’s being forced to return that bronze medal.

Here’s the most recent, illuminating, and damning example. On Aug. 3, Faith Chepkoech won the Beach to Beacon 10K in Maine. She passed the race-day doping test.

A month after the race, it was revealed that she had been tested in Kenya 10 days earlier on July 26—shortly before flying to Maine. Her Kenyan test revealed that Chepkoech had been blood doping with EPO.

For this, she received a three-year ban that disqualified her from the Beach to Beacon win. In this case, the normal four-year-ban was reduced because she confessed to doping. Let’s hope she provided enough details for the AIU to sniff out other athletes.

What Can Be Done About Kenya?

The three athletes named above are all Kenyan runners. That’s a shame. I traveled to Kenya twice 20 years ago to meet its wonderful athletes and communities that produce so much greatness, and always believed them paragons of integrity.

Looking back, I now fear that perhaps I was naive. At any rate, the large number of Kenyan doping offences in recent years indicate that the country has a serious problem. I now have a weary, skeptical eye.

It’s tempting to suggest that big races should just give up on in-competition testing. They could shift funds to the much more successful out-of-competition tests.

I suspect, however, that there’s a strong economic argument against this. It’s expensive for drug testers to travel to out-of-the-way locations to administer individual tests. It’s much more efficient when large numbers of athletes travel to one location—an Olympics or World Marathon Majors—where they can easily be tested.

These tests do increase the data available in athlete biological passports, which represent our best current avenue to cleaning up the sport. So we might as well keep doing in-competition tests.

But we shouldn’t believe clean in-competition tests have any meaning. Because they don’t.

(*Which track runner failed a doping test at the Paris Olympics? Dominique Lasconi Mulamba, a 100m sprinter from the Democratic Republic of Congo.)

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Editor’s Note: Later this week, in the lead up to the New York City Marathon, Marathon Handbook will publish an opinion piece from our editors exploring real-world steps on how to fix athletics’ doping problem, and who should take the lead on resolving this long-gestating crisis in the sport.