Quantifying the problem of international sports doping

With the 2016 Olympics about to start the problem of sports doping is topical. Most attention  is concentrated on sports men and women from the Russian Federation.

The specifics of the current Russian doping scandal have yet to be sorted out. There has yet to be a proper investigation. But I thought it worth attempting to quantify the problem – and, in particular, illustrate that sports doping is not just a problem in the Russian Federation.

I have taken the latest official figures available. Released in February 2016 these are the international doping figures for 2014 and are published in the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) report “2014 Anti-doping Rule Violations (ADRVs) Report.” 

What do these data show?

Numbers of positive doping tests

Perhaps not surprising to the average reader the Russian Federation scores the largest number of positive tests. But perhaps, given the current news coverage, the surprise is that the numbers are not that great and not much greater than for other countries

But let’s put that into some sort of context

Number of doping tests

When we look at the number of doping test actually taken we find a very important factor. The total number of doping tests taken was much larger for the Russian Federation than for most other countries. So the higher number of positive tests is not so surprising. Do more tests and you will catch more violations.

Proportion of positive doping tests

This is a better way to compare the figures by nation. When we make that comparison the data for the Russian Federation is not that out of step with the rest of the world.

In fact, if we are going to point fingers we should be pointing them at other nations before we point them at the Russian Federation.

I decided to look at the data because of a Facebook post from Nina Kouprianova (see WADA sports doping stats sorted (not by me)) which showed that the Russian Federation was well down the list of nations guilty of sports doping – in fact, 19th.

Here is her table.

The Russian Federation scores lower than the average for the whole world – 1.05% of positive tests.

Some qualifications which should be obvious.

Before I get attacked for being “pro-Moscow” (yet again) I must mention a couple of factors.

1: Some positive tests for many countries were put aside by WADA after cases were further considered. However, I do not think this changes the main message of the table above. (The numbers are in the report if anyone wants to check this out).

2: The current attention to the doping problem in the Russian Federation concentrates on more recent cases where these is, as yet, no reliable data. In particular there is the revelation of criminal activity by the head of the Moscow testing laboratory. He has since fled the country and surfaced in the USA.

While the officials implicated by these revelations have been suspended or sacked and criminal investigations are underway it is not yet possible to get official numbers.

Finally, I don’t think anyone can justify sports doping – whatever the nationality of the person concerned.  It  must be fought against and guilty athletes and officials should be punished.

However, we should be careful of violating basic elements of justice. Collective punishment is the sort of thing the Nazis went in for – killing a whole village because one of their soldiers had been shot by a partisan.  It is shocking to hear politicians and sportspeople advocating such forms of punishment here.

We should not make clean athletes suffer for the acts of others who indulged in doping.

It seems to me these actions will not solve the problem of sports doing – only make it worse and introduce other worse problems.

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