The Economist July 17th 2021 67
Science & technologySportanddrugs
Still doped up?
A
s olympics go, the 2020 games, sched
uled to start in Tokyo on July 23rd, are
shaping up to be among the strangest in
the competition’s history. Because of co
vid19, even their name is out of date, for
they are taking place a year late. And conta
gionprevention means most stadiums
will be empty of spectators, so events will
take place in funereal silence.
The 2020 games will be unusual in an
other way, too. They will be the first sum
mer games since 1984’s—which were boy
cotted by the Soviet Union—at which Rus
sia will not be present, at least officially.
Though some of its athletes will partici
pate as individuals, under the flag of the
Russian Olympic Committee, the national
team has been banned in the aftermath of
one of the biggest doping scandals in the
history of sport. Between 2011 and 2015, and
possibly for longer, Russia systematically
doped hundreds of athletes. It roped in its
spy agencies to subvert the antidoping
tests overseen by the World AntiDoping
Agency (wada), then fabricated data as part
of an attempt to get back into the authori
ties’ good books. A controversial court rul
ing last year reduced Russia’s initial four
year ban to two, which will expire in 2022.
Stung by a scandal that took place under
their noses, officials insist this year’s
games will be the bestpoliced ever. The In
ternational Olympic Committee says test
ing in the runup to them will be the most
extensive yet conducted. Sebastian Coe,
president of Word Athletics, the interna
tional governing body of athletes, has
warned that it will be harder than ever to
get away with doping.
“Harder than ever” is, however, a long
way from “impossible”. Though new tech
nology and increasingly strict rules have
indeed made doping trickier than in the
past, thousands of the 11,000odd athletes
at the Tokyo games could nonetheless be
cheating. Steroids, erythropoietin (epo)
and newer, less familiar performanceen
hancing drugs (peds) will have bulked
their muscles, enriched their blood and al
lowed them to train harder than unen
hanced humans would find possible. Newdrugs, clever tactics and institutional in
difference or corruption could meanwhile
help them outwit testers.
Covid19 may have made things worse,
says Ross Tucker, a South African sports
scientist. Since the effects of peds last
much longer than the drugs stay in an ath
lete’s body, elite competitors are subject to
testing even when they are not competing.
But travel bans and lockdowns have dis
rupted that system. Between covid19, the
fallout from Russia and a steady drip of
other doping cases, every performance in
Tokyo—even those by clean athletes—will
take place under a faint but ineradicable
cloud of suspicion. As Kyle Chalmers, an
Australian swimmer who won the 100 me
tres freestyle at the 2016 summer Olympics
in Brazil, put it last year, “I can probably not
trust half the guys I’m competing against.”Breakfast of champions
No one knows how many athletes still
dope. But a glance at the headlines sug
gests it is far from rare. In 2019 Nike, a
sportswear company, closed down its
muchpublicised Oregon Project, a train
ing camp for elite runners, after Alberto Sa
lazar, the head coach there, was given a
fouryear ban for doping. (Mr Salazar is ap
pealing.) Kenya is famous for the domi
nance of its middle and longdistance
runners. These days that reputation is
looking tarnished. The Athletics Integrity
Unit, which polices antidoping in athlet
ics, lists 68 Kenyan runners currently
banned from competing, including Wilson
Kipsang, a former Olympic medallist andThousands of athletes at the Tokyo Olympics are likely to be doping. How many
will get caught remains to be seen
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