Russian sports doping scandal looking like an illusion?

Image credit: Russiangate – DOPING SCANDALS IN RUSSIAN SPORTS

There is often a difference, sometimes a big difference between public perception, even media reports, and the facts. Recent news from the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) illustrate this for sport.

The belief that Russian sportsmen and women indulge in doping to a much higher degree than for other nations is widespread. Our media reinforces that belief – and, true, the International Olympic Committee and WADA certainly provide plenty of information to support it. Bans on Russian athletes have been common lately and there is widespread media coverage any time there is even a suspicion that a Russian athlete may have violated doping rules.

But what are the facts?

Well, we can check as WADA periodically publishes data for athlete doping violations. In my article  Quantifying the problem of international sports doping I discussed the data for 2014 This showed that when the number of tests taken for each country’s athletes is considered,  Russian athlete’s ranked 19th on the list of positive doping tests. The high number of positive tests for that nation can be explained by the much higher number of tests actually taken.

WADA has now published its data for 2016 (see WADA publishes Anti-Doping Rule Violations Report for 2016). Yes, a few years old, but there is quite a time between taking the test samples, declaring a possible violation, considering the factors involved and finally declaring a violation. The WADA report (2016 Anti-Doping Rule Violations (ADRVs) Report) includes all the data up until the end of 1017.

So what are the facts?

Contrary to public perception, athletes from the Russian Federation do not top the table for the number of doping violations – they actually rank 6th  (together with India) with 69 violations (ADRVs – anti-doping rule violations). After Italy (147 violations), France (86), USA (76), Australia (75) and Belgium (73).

Unfortunately, the current report does not give data for the total number of tests according to the country – only for the national sporting federations. This is not the same thing.

I suspect, given the international furore over doping violations by Russian athletes, and the extra testing imposed by the IOC, Russian athletes may have again undergone a higher frequency of testing. It could be that the Russian Federation actually ranks lower than 6th when considered on a proportional basis.

New Zealand ranks 44th on the WADA list with 7 violations. Good news, I guess. But I wonder what our ranking would be if proven violations were reported as a percentage of tests taken.

Good news also is that the percentage of confirmed violations worldwide is relatively low overall. There were a total 1,326 ADRVs from 229,514 samples taken -0 a rate of only 0.6%. Perhaps sports doping is not as bad as we are led to think. Or perhaps it shows that the huge investment in anti-doping measures has been paying off.

The Russian doping scandal

Finally, I should mention this is not the only current news on the issue of doping by athletes from the Russian Federation. Over the last few years, our media has often covered this issue, apparently exposing a scandal involving the official Russian testing laboratory in Moscow and a state-sponsored scheme to hide doping of athletes at the 2014 Sochi Winter Olympics. This scandal has helped keep the problem of doping by Russian athletes in the public mind – and Russian leaders themselves have not denied there was a problem – although they rejected the claims of state-sponsored schemes.

Many people think the Russian athletes have been treated badly. I queried the reliability of the McLaren report which was used for IOC banning of a large number of Russian athletes. (see Ethics and the doping scandal – a response to Guest Work). The banned athletes have also taken legal action to get their names cleared.

A very significant ruling has recently been made public on these bans. The Court of Arbitration for Sport have released their ruling on the case of  Alexander Legkov (see CAS delivers two reasoned awards in the matter of 39 Russian athletes v. the IOC). This ruling found that the case against Legkov had not been proved (see the ARBITRAL AWARD). The evidence of the main witness (“whistleblower”/criminal Grigori Rodchenkov), and hence by implication the McLaren report relying on that evidence, was found unreliable.

This is just the tip of the iceberg and only one of the 39 decisions made public last February 1st which upheld the appeals of 27 Russian athletes and partly upheld the appeals of 12 others.

I guess, better late than never. However, public perception is strongly influenced by first impressions and first allegations (especially when supported by bodies like the IOC). It is going to take some time before the public perception of the problem of sports doping with Russian athletes will become more realistic.

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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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