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Great blog Tom. Really informative. Just shows that excelling in your sport is not all that is required. So much more to being a sportsperson than just train and compete.

I listened to the programme on Tuesday Tom and was quite surprised at Karen Pickering's views - she states the need for out of competition testing but doesn't see the need for those testers to know where the athletes will be. How can out of competition testing be effective and efficient if testers have to gamble on an athlete being somewhere whenever they want to test them?

As for the organisation of athletes, you mentioned yourself that it was difficult to begin with but became easier as you got used to the system and knowing that you have to plan ahead. I think the 60 second notification is brilliant (although as you highlighted there should be more protection around this), surely it doesn't take much to set an alert on your phone for a certain time before your designated hour. If you're not where you should be and can't get there then you have ample time to notify the authorities and correct things. I appreciate that the odd mishap may occur but you have to be seriously disorganised for those to occur on three occasions where you are to be tested in an 18 month period.

Interesting stuff. For the first time in years I'm not watching the Tour de France because I've grown sick and tired of all the drug scandals, the Contador situation gives me a horrible feeling in the depth of my stomach. He got caught, yet he keeps his title and is defending this year having won the Giro in Italy. I think of how many hours I've spent watching the race, the money I've spent to be at the roadside, the emotional investment of those close finishes. The amazing moment when Rasmussen battled Contador on the mountain side. When Armstrong battled Ulrich and Vinokourov. When Landis destroyed the field to claim victory when all looked lost. All amazing moments, but many of them likely drug-enhanced and dishonest. After Contador I'm finished. I'm disillutioned to the core.

Athletics and any sport decided by endurance or power has to answer the same questions.

The system does sound unnecessarily complicated, I'm the kind of free spirit who would find it frustratingly restrictive, but as fans we need to know these athletes are clean, and any step towards that is a step worth taking.

This system is absolutely ridiculous. The need for doping testing is real but this approach crosses the line over to infringing people's basic rights. There is no need for anyone to know where you are going to be at all times. This approach will not stop cheaters from cheating and on the subject of cheaters, they will always find ways to be one step ahead of the system. This approach only disturbs and violates those who are innocent. All anti-doping systems are anyway are systems through which those who get away with using performance enhancing drugs and those who are caught for show can be controlled and regulated for the gain of the sport by those in charge of it.

I think the system is a great idea, even if it seems a little strict, but what is the point of having all these checks when 4 Brazilian swimmers don't get banned when testing positive and we as a nation don't have the guts to tell the IOC that we want our rules implemented for the Olympics when they're bing held in our country.

The Olympics should be drug free and this includes ANYONE already caught cheating, regardless of any 'ban' they may have served.

UKAD should distribute smartphones/pdas to all the athletes with their access set to a joint electronic calendar system. That way when they choose to change their schedule they can update their calendar and the drug-testers know exactly where they are and can meet them there. 24 hour notice should be enough for both parties, maybe even 12 hours.

In my company we all carry blackberries so that we can handle out of hours calls. I think this solution should help.

legalise all performance-enhancing drugs now. create a level playing-field for all.
let's see how far an individual can progress under optimum conditions.

I think there is one point being missed here. Many of the athletes caught by this system are professional athletes, ie, competing in Sport within its rules and regulations is their job. The financial rewards for being a top level athlete can be huge - look at Rafa Nadal as a case in point. Having a clean image is important to sponsors. Lawyers, doctors, police officers teachers all have complex professional rules and requirements and all have skills where time management and planning is part of day to day life. Given that most athletes express a view on wishing to compete in a clean environment, surely they just have to accept the testing as part of their workplace and the organisation required as another facet of their job? They can be very disciplined as to training and diet, after all.

This is pretty interesting and shows that Athletics, like other sports, is taking things seriously. The real problem, though, is not trying to pin down the athletes, but the tests themselves.
Just before the last Olympic Games, there was an excellent programme on Radio 4 called Something in the Blood. On hearing it, I changed my view that Dwain Chambers should not represent Great Britain: though he has freely admitted he cheated (which is why I held that he should not represent GB) the programme made it very clear that he was essentially unlucky to be caught. In the words of a Danish medical expert with a particular interest in sports medicine, "You have to be smart not to be caught, but not that smart." This new system may mean you now have to be smarter, but the real worry was the testing itself.
The Danish medical expert mentioned conducted a study in which he sent samples of urine from volunteers who had been given quite high doses of performance-enhancing drugs to 20 or 30 labs, all of them used by WADA. Half of them siad there were no problems with the samples. He explained that sometimes the tests were not conducted properly, sometimes interpreting the results was difficult or the testers incompetent. He also said that when they tested the control group in their lab in Denmark, the levels were all but untraceable if they were tested 24 - 48 hours after taking a dose but that athletes could still enjoy the benefits in terms of increased performance for weeks. In his opinion, an awful lot of athletes take banned substances and he was particularly certain that those in endurance sports (cycling for example) are taking them as a matter of course. Not everyone will be naturally, but this man was pretty adamant.

Knowing where athletes are every second of their lives will not solve these problems.

"legalise all performance-enhancing drugs now. create a level playing-field for all.
let's see how far an individual can progress under optimum conditions."

1. It could only lead to a "level playing-field for all" if all athletes, regardless of how poor they are, get the same drugs, do you think that those living in Sudan, Albania or Vietnam would get the same access to the 'best' drugs as those from America, Britain, Germany etc. ?
2. When anything goes, morals go just as quickly, allowing and condoning drug use would inevitably lead to people wanting the 'best' drugs now, proper safety testing would disappear and people damaged by the side effects would not only increase in numbers, but they'd probably be left high and dry with no recourse available to them.

@7 hmmmmm.... weird

@6 Athletes are not employees. They choose to compete in events which have rules, if they don't want to abide by the rules, don't compete. A simple Smartphone App would do the trick - no need to distribute hardware which needs to be maintained and paid for.

@5 completely agree - rules need to be applied universally or they risk becoming redundant. If a local organising body does not apply the rules in the specified way, all athletes from that region/country should be banned from international competition.

It is possible for mobile operators to have a reasonable idea as to the location of your mobile phone by knowing which cell you are attached to. Would it not be useful if one of these operators offered a phone service to athletes (in return for some form of sponsorship) which would provide location information? This information could be mapped against a list of addresses that the testers could access to determine where you are. All the athlete needs to do is take their phone and keep it on and charged. (I know this isn't perfect but it could be refined to become a useful way of doing testing without the ADAM system).

Spoken like true armchair critics.

Most athletes under this system do not make much money, and I doubt you've even heard of 90% of British athletes.

"Our job is not about catching cheats; our job is about preventing people from cheating. It would be harder for Dwain Chambers to cheat now like he did in 2003."

This is pure propaganda. The failure to find more cheats by introducing this system is damning, yet they congratulate themselves for it! The only people they are "catching" are athletes such as Karen Pickering, who find their schedule thrown into chaos for reasons outside their control. The cheats, meanwhile, continue to prosper.

And as regards Dwain Chambers, he had no fear of drugs tests; according to his own account, he took many tests while he was doping, safe in the knowledge that his drugs were undetectable. How exactly would the whereabouts system have prevented that?

Having said that, I am in favour of the whereabouts system, as long as those administrating it do all in their power to ensure that athletes falling foul of it are dishonest, rather than disorganised. I am glad to see the system has improved since its inception, but I fail to see how draconian action against careless, innocent athletes prevents doping by careful, cynical cheats.

Let's just microchip every athlete in the world. Easier to keep track of, and to hell with their rights! [sarcasm=off]

Maybe it is just me but I don't really care if atheletes use drugs or not. I think that most people will have suspicion no matter what measures are taken, so why bother trying to elminate it? Just say you can all take drugs and then the best athelete will still be the winner as they will all be on drugs. At least then we'll know the playing field is level.

I know that sounds like a strange argument but what else is left? As the testing gets better the drugs just get more advanced. It is an endless battle and sport will ultimately be undermined by suspicion. At least if drugs are legal and monitored, they can be properly tested and we won't have 100m finals where 6 of the 9 runners are under suspicion (and thus the result means nothing) and cyclists dropping dead at 35 years old because they took uncontrolled and untested substances.

Better to level the playing field, save the cash, eliminate suspicion and protect atheletes health by helping to create safe performance-enhancing drugs than just carry on this charade.

Yes, yes, yes... i meant 8 runners.

and one more thing, this system seems to take away civil liberties and place pressure on atheletes. Just a thought but would an athelete who is in the closet and chooses to legally visit adult movie theatres not feel embarrassed and pressured about reporting that to the doping controllers. Extreme example, I know, but I'm sure plenty of people would not appreciate someone knowing exactly what they were doing, where they were doing it and who they were doing it with. Especially in an age where people like the News Of The World are interested in people's private lives so much. Seems that atheletes are subjected to a pretty severe infringement of their civil liberties and their right to move freely when the rest of us are not.

one of my best friends is a goalkeeper for GB hockey who have a cut-back doping policy as no-one has failed a test for 5 years...basically they only have to declare an hour a day that they are available for (so most simply list their training times when they know they have to be at Bisham Abbey, or early in the morning when they'll definitely be in bed) and they don't find the system any bother at all.

personally i think this system should be extended to all athletes; it means they are available for testing every day of the year, but allows them to select the time to best suit them.

TOM

Most interesting.

My interest is football, which gets lumped into this anti-doping hoohah, because it's a high-profile sport & not because there are even a modicum of failed tests.

In fact, apart from Paddy Kenny's cough/cold medication & Toure's diet pills, it's hard to recall ANY tests that detected performance-enhancing drugs/substances, rather than a very occasional use of recreational drugs. So do we need this approach in football, or anywhere else?

Cycling, athletics per se & maybe, just maybe, tennis, perhaps. But, even then, are there enough postive tests to make it necessary there?

I do always wonder if this anti-drugs stuff is just another blasted growth industry like stress-counselling? ie One we don't really need but can't be bothered to tell where to go!

Er, anybody ever heard of GPS tracking? You can link your phone to facebook and twitter and be located anywhere on the planet, including Tesco's. Would save an awful lot of admin.

Personally the only thing I see wrong with this Whereabouts system is the fact that the UK is the only nation that has such a thing. And that while we throw lifetime Olympic bans at any athlete who takes drugs, all of the other nations just tell their athletes to take a break.

This is what stops sport being a level playing field.

Not draconian drug testing rules in one nation, but a complete lack of rules in all of the others.

That being said, I would like to ask Tom if he feels, having spent a month operating under the Whereabouts system, that UK Athletics were right to allow Christine Ohroguru (pardon the spelling) to compete again having missed 3 tests in 18 months, while at the same time banning Dwain Chambers from competing at the Olympics because he failed a test.

Especially in lieu of the fact that three missed tests is supposed to carry the same punishment as one failed test.

And the fact that there were only 740 tests IN TOTAL last year, barely 2 per day, which encompassed every single athlete in the nation, surely means that if you are doping you are probably going to get away with it anyway. How many elite athletes do we have in the UK? A lot more than 740 I would guess when you take all of the different sports such as swimming, cycling, rowing, wrestling, diving, running, shot-put, and tons more that I can't think of right now into account....

The fact that over a third of all tests are targeted at specific individuals makes it clear that, when it really matters, just like all the other countries, if your face fits the testers will turn a blind eye to you doping

Does this mean you are done with the program now? If so then I would say that 1 month doesn't really qualify anyone to make a real judgement on a system, more just a first impression. I hope you stick with it and report back in maybe 6 months time how it has effected your life overall, I'd also like someone who has kids to try it because I'm told it gets 10x harder when they are school age, especially if you are an amateur.

@Tom - Yup, I guess that's why it's addictive, and I guess that's why it's great to write about. But how hollow Carl Lewis's '88 100m gold must feel, Inter's Calciopoli titles, Oscar Perreiro's TdF win. Sport gives such highs and lows and drama, but when reality of those is taken away it feels like wasted energy, a loss of some kind.

That's why the testing is worth it.

This comment was removed because the moderators found it broke the house rules. Explain.

This system is all well and good but athletics will remain under a shadow until similar systems are in place around the world. I will happily bet my annual salary that the athletics events at London 2012 will once more produce a fair share of supposedly "rank outsiders" winning gold medals, who then immediately return once more to obscurity as they don't compete on the regular IAF circuit where competition drug testing takes place. And they will all come from nations who have nothing in place like the regime described here.

#7 "legalise all performance-enhancing drugs now. create a level playing-field for all.
let's see how far an individual can progress under optimum conditions."

Do you really want a situation again where totalitarian countries basically destroy their top athletes by forcing them to take drugs? It's bad enough now when countries like China take promising children from their families and put them through what is already a fairly brutal regime, but imagine if they were then free to drug them up to the eyeballs as well, and all because of some misguided political belief that being good at sport somehow justifies your politics. And don't forget that the drugs would have to be legalised and become available to all, and if it's ok for those at the top then it must be ok for those at the bottom as well. Do you really want a situation where it's the norm for promising teenagers to be pumping themselves full of drugs, or where club rugby players, Sunday league footballers and village cricketers are are all taking steroids because it's the norm? I think we have quite enough thugs already without having thousands of youngsters also suffering from roid-rage.

The thing I think the whereabouts programme doesn't take into account is the completely different lifestyles of different sports. Athletes often train in the same place at the same time for months, having the occasional meeting, but have a well established routine. Footballers, similarly, are tied down to training grounds, matches etc. Tennis players, on the other hand, are all over the world for the majority of the year. They don't know how long they will be there, not being able to guarantee how many matches they will win, whether they will get an injury or anything else. I don't think it's a coincidence that some of the most vehement protests against the system come from tennis players, and if I was woken up at 6am, when I had just the night before got home from the other side of the world and had jetlag (like happened to Murray), I wouldn't be too thrilled either.

Another thing with the tennis system which is stupid is that you only have to provide your whereabouts if you are in the top 50 in the world. What the difference is between no. 50 and no. 51 is beyond me. Players have got into trouble when they have moved into the top 50 and not known what was required of them (see Yanina Wickmayer of Belgium as an example), and have missed tests. As far as I'm concerned, it's as legitimate to test no. 325 as it is no. 3. You test one, you test them all.

Many people say it is invasive. I don't think anybody has the right to know where someone is every day of every year. Surely there is a better way to run this system.

I think we can all agree that drugs are wrong in sport and will remain wrong - the real "doping" scandal certainly at IOC level is the fact that the "Big 6-7" worl athletic associations can afford to spend the budget of probably the bottom 100-150 combined countries on hi-tech kit that in effect means no one with said kit has any chance of winning at all - just look at the furore over the swimsuits that pretty much meant the only thing likely to beat someone wearing on was a dolphin. Everything is sports at the Olympics should be a level playing field given what the Olympics represents.