Katie Ledecky ‘very comfortable’ with her role in a pilot program in which athletes self-test as anti-doping agents observe through FaceTime and Zoom
The United States Anti-Doping Agency (USADA) is using online chat, video and conferencing services to run anti-doping missions in which athletes are asked to collect their own blood and urine samples while being observed remotely by anti-doping agents.
USADA chief executive Travis Tygart told the New York Times that plenty of top US Olympic hopes were eager to sign up for the pilot project.
Katie Ledecky, Olympic200, 400 and 800m freestyle champion, is among those who volunteered, alongside Lilly King. Ledecky said she “felt very comfortable” administering her first self test this week at her home in California.
It’s a novel approach to out-of-competition, random testing at a time of the novel coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic and related lockdown but Tygart revealed that USADA had been planning to operate remotely before the COVID-19 crisis. He told the newspaper:
“We’ve been talking about this and laying the foundation for several months. COVID put that on fast forward and allowed us to roll it out.”
USADA, conscious of doing its bit on social-distancing that keeps athletes and anti-doping agents safe but keen to keep up testing programs, has turned to Zoom, Skype, FaceTime and other chat/conference services to run testing.
Anti-doping test kits were sent to athletes who volunteered to take part, including elite swimmers and track and field stars. They must produce samples when they receive an unannounced call from a doping control officer.
The officer watches the blood sample being taken, but urine samples are provided in private, according to the newspaper. The samples are sealed under the eye of the doping control officer and sent to an accredited lab for testing.
It is not clear how the “private” version of passing urine compares to the presence of an agent present at a test and there to witness the passing of urine and ensure that there is no manipulation.
The New York Times reported that USADA had built safeguards into the system to limit opportunities for cheating.
Although athletes are not observed during collection of urine, they are asked to “show the monitoring officer the bathroom that will be used, they are timed and the temperature of the sample is recorded to lessen the chances of sample tampering or sample substitution.”.
Lessen the chances of tampering is a term that may raise more questions about the quality of such testing in a world in which 22 years ago Michelle Smith was said to have been able to pour whiskey into a urine sample somehow without that being observed by Kay Guy, the agent present. In the subsequent case that led to the suspension of Smith on the groups of tampering, Guy noted that she had been unable to witness the passing of urine because of clothing had got in the way of proper observation. Just how such matters can be overcome on trust and the measures USADA has put into place remains to be seen.