Athlete drug testing

DEFINITION: Analyses conducted on athletes to determine if they have taken banned substances.

SIGNIFICANCE: Athletes competing at high levels seek to gain advantages over their opponents. Some do so by using substances that they believe can improve athletic performance or the body’s physical work capacity. Many of these substances are drugs, and many are banned by various organizations that regulate sports, such as the National Collegiate Athletic Association and the International Olympic Committee. Despite such bans, some athletes still use these substances, making drug testing necessary to keep competition fair. Athletes who fail drug tests may be ruled ineligible for competition or may have their previously awarded medals or titles revoked.

The use of particular substances to improve athletic performance dates back to the ancient Greeks. It was not until 1928 that the International Amateur Athletic Federation became the first sports organization to ban athletes’ use of certain substances. The federation, however, had no way to detect whether athletes were breaking the rules, and the use of performance-enhancing substances continued to increase. Drug testing of athletes for banned substances was first used in 1966 by the international federations governing the sports of soccer and cycling. They were soon followed by the International Olympic Committee (IOC), which began drug testing in 1968 with the Grenoble Winter Olympic Games and the Mexico City Summer Olympic Games. The first athlete in Olympics history to be disqualified based on the results of drug testing was a Swedish modern pentathlon participant who tested positive for excessive alcohol in Mexico City.

By the 1970s, the widespread use of anabolic steroids among athletes forced the introduction of drug testing by most international sports organizations. The National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) implemented a drug-testing program in the fall of 1986 for all athletes participating in NCAA bowl games and national championships. By 1990, the NCAA had adopted year-round testing of athletes on teams within the association. All of the major sports organizations in the United States have strict and extensive drug-testing policies. Because of the drug scandals that have plagued Major League Baseball since the 1990s, the league has one of the strictest sets of rules, especially pertaining to steroids; if a player tests positive three times, he will receive a lifetime ban. The International Olympic Committee also has a strong policy and reserves the right to test its athletes at any time.

Doping in the twenty-first century remained a major issue. Leading up to the Summer Olympics in 2016, a report from the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) released in late 2015 accused Russia of taking part in a state-sanctioned drug program involving many of its Olympic athletes dating back to the Games in 2012 and even 2008. According to reports, staff members at testing facilities were even swapping athletes' tainted samples with clean samples to help them avoid detection. Because of the extent of the breach of confidence warranted by the details that were then brought to light confirming the accusations, the Russian track and field team was banned from the Olympics in Rio de Janeiro; the 2016 Summer Olympics were generally scrutinized even more heavily in terms of the reliability of drug-testing procedures. Additionally, by November 2016, following the retesting of urine samples from the 2008 and 2012 Olympic competitions, more than seventy athletes were found to have been using drugs, and several were stripped of their medals. At the 2018 Winter Olympics in Pyeongchang, South Korea, there were four positive doping cases, and at the 2021 Summer Olympics in Tokyo, Japan, there were nine. A controversy erupted prior to the 2024 Paris Summer Games after reports emerged that claimed the WADA did not disclose that nearly two dozen Chinese swimmers tested positive for performance enhancing substances prior to the 2021 Tokyo Summer Games.

Drug-Testing Techniques

Common methods used to detect illicit drug use include the testing of blood, urine, hair, and saliva samples. The method chosen for a particular purpose must take into consideration the accuracy level provided by the test, the ease of obtaining the sample, and the period of time for which the test can detect drugs in the sample. Urine testing is most commonly used for athletes because it is accurate, no cutting or piercing of the skin is involved, and it can detect drug use for the previous seven days or longer.

To complete a urine test, an athlete must provide a fresh sample of urine collected in a clean vessel under supervision. Although this may be awkward for some, it is important that the tester be certain that the vessel contains that particular athlete’s actual urine. After the vessel is appropriately labeled, it is sent to a laboratory for analysis.

The techniques used to examine urine for the presence of drugs include gas chromatography, immunoassay, and mass spectrometry. In gas chromatography, the urine sample is vaporized in the presence of a gaseous solvent as it travels through a machine called a gas chromatograph. Because the various substances in the urine dissolve in the solvent at different rates, they come out of the solvent at different times, leaving a pattern on a liquid or solid material. The pattern is analyzed by a detector, and a chromatogram is produced. Because different drugs produce different chromatograms, the analyst can compare the urine sample output with known drug outputs to identify the presence of specific drugs in the urine.

A mass spectrometer is a machine with a long magnetic tube with a detector on the end. An electron beam blasts the urine sample and sends it down the tube to the detector. Every substance has a unique mass spectrometer output, so by comparing the outputs of known drugs with the urine output, the analyst can identify any specific drugs present in the urine.

Immunoassay tests are used to detect the presence of hormone-like drugs in urine. A specific antibody (a protein that binds to particular substances) is tagged with a fluorescent dye or a radioactive marker and then mixed with the urine sample. The antibody binds to the drug (hormone), and the analyst measures the amount of fluorescent light or radioactivity in the sample to determine the amount of the drug or hormone present. Because this test also measures naturally occurring hormones in the urine, the analyst must know the athlete’s natural hormone level to determine whether the athlete has taken a hormone-like drug.

Innovations in drug testing are appearing and evolving in the first decades of the twenty-first century. In 2022, a technology using fingerprints to detect performance enhancing drugs, called paper spray mass spectrometry, was far into development. This method finds molecules in fingerprints as the body metabolizes drugs. This drug testing technique solves the problem of athletes passing off clean urine to pass a drug test. It is also non-invasive and provides instant results.

Challenges to Drug Testing

In 1987, one year after the NCAA adopted its drug-testing program, a member of Stanford University’s women’s diving team filed a lawsuit in which she claimed that the program violated her right to privacy. As the case made its way through the courts, the drug testing continued, and in 1994 the California Supreme Court ruled that the NCAA was “well within its legal rights” to conduct drug testing. This ruling cleared the way for other athletic organizations to establish drug-testing programs. In 2009, many athletes protested WADA's requirement known as the "whereabouts" rule, which mandates that athletes provide information pertaining to their location for one hour daily. While the rule is designed to enable authorities to surprise athletes with testing and ensure that they cannot take advantage of time lapses and increasingly sophisticated drugs to eliminate any traces during out-of-competition periods, some athletes feel that the stipulation is an invasion of their privacy.

The ongoing challenge of athletic drug testing is the constant development of new drugs that existing methods and technologies are unable to detect. Athletes are continually looking for new advantages, and manufacturers are developing new drugs to improve athletic performance. After a new performance-enhancing substance becomes available, it often takes months or years for it to become popular enough to warrant the attention of sports officials. Then months or even years may elapse before scientists can develop new tests to determine whether athletes have used these drugs. During this lag of up to several years before a given drug is detectable, even more drugs are developed, and the process begins again. This cycle creates a perpetual challenge to those who seek to keep sports competitions free from the use of banned performance-enhancing substances.

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