[POLL] A look Inside How Drug Tests are Conducted for Olympic Athletes -- SCARY

Amused

Elite Member
Apr 14, 2001
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http://online.wsj.com/public/page/0,,public_home_search,00.html#SB109295200514896573

It's the Knock All Olympians Dread
Random Drug Testers Call At Inopportune Moments; Paper Cups, Ruined Dates

By PETER WALDMAN, Staff Reporter, The Wall Street Journal

ATHENS -- Swimmer Gary Hall Jr. was hosting a British lord for dinner.

Volleyball player Tom Hoff was negotiating a business contract.

And Jarred Rome, a discus thrower, was fast asleep at dawn before a big meet. "You know that feeling when you open your eyes and somebody's standing over you?" says the 300-pound hurler. "I about floored the guy."

Instead, Mr. Rome did what fellow U.S. Olympians Hall and Hoff and hundreds of other elite athletes have done in similar predicaments: He led the uninvited guests into the bathroom and urinated into a paper cup while they watched. "It's always strange when the guy's staring right at you," says Aaron Peirsol, who scooped up his second backstroke gold medal last night.

No athlete wants to get busted cheating with drugs. Yet staying clean has its own humiliations. Either way, everyone gets caught with their pants down.

Sports federations in many countries, including the U.S., now require athletes to submit to surprise, year-round drug testing to compete. For many American athletes, that means filing notice of their daily whereabouts for three months in advance with the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency. Evading "drug-control officers," as the sample-gatherers are called, or refusing to provide a specimen on demand, can lead to suspension from competition.

Unpleasant Surprises

Cooperating with the drug testers, though, can lead to other indignities.

Mr. Hall, a favorite for a gold medal in the 50-meter freestyle race today, was eating dinner recently in his Florida home with the visiting lord and some other British dignitaries when the doorbell rang. His wife was serving her specialty; they'd uncorked a fine bottle of Pinot Noir.

The drug testers were friendly but insistent. "They set down their paraphernalia on the table next to the Cornish game hen," Mr. Hall recalls. The testers lingered at the candlelit table for a half-hour or so, bantering with guests about real estate, as Mr. Hall guzzled several glasses of water.

"Any time people are waiting around for you to pee in a cup, it's awkward," the swimmer says.

Mr. Hoff, the volleyballer, was in a meeting in Greece, negotiating a contract to play professional ball. He wasn't surprised when the drug samplers appeared; they had roused his sleeping family -- "the dogs go crazy, the kids cry" -- a half-dozen times with early-morning visits over the previous year, he says. But he was angry.

"If I were a businessman in a meeting like that," says Mr. Hoff, "I guarantee you they'd never barge in. As an Olympic athlete, these people have the power to drag me out of anything."

No-notice testing -- any place, any time -- is the only way to deter and detect drug cheating, says Rune Andersen, director of standards and testing for the World Anti-Doping Agency, the lead antidrug body for international sports. He says most drug testers do their best to find athletes at their training facilities, and track them down at home or elsewhere only when that isn't possible. "Knocking on an athlete's door is a last resort," he says. "That's the price top athletes sometimes have to pay."

The element of surprise is crucial, Mr. Andersen says, because determined cheaters, if given as little as six hours' notice before a test, have many ways to mask their drug use. That's why International Olympic Committee officials were so alarmed when Greece's top two sprinters, Costas Kenteris and Katerina Thanou, missed a surprise drug test on the eve of the Games, and then claimed to have been hospitalized for a motorcycle accident.

They offered to have their urine tested in the hospital, but the IOC declined, cognizant of the many ways to purge banned substances with drugs and catheters. At an IOC hearing Wednesday, both Greek sprinters, while professing innocence, withdrew from the Games and apologized to their crestfallen countrymen.

The fight against drug cheaters is a battle of cat and mouse, says Mr. Andersen, who spent 15 years in the field gathering specimens before becoming an administrator. Some gyms post watchmen, with intricate signaling systems using flags and radios, to alert athletes to arriving drug testers, he says. And athletes themselves are resorting to bizarre and intricate methods of evasion.

During one unannounced test of an Iranian weightlifter in Norway, Mr. Andersen noticed the man's upper body shifting unusually. The specimen he produced felt suspiciously cool as well. So Mr. Andersen demanded the Iranian remove his shirt and produce a second sample.

The weightlifter refused, claiming his religion forbids nudity. When he finally relented, he tested positive for anabolic steroids and was banned from competition for three years. It turned out his first negative sample had come from a balloon lodged in the man's armpit, with a tube running down his arm to fill the paper cup.

'It Has Come to This'

Indeed, Mr. Andersen says informants in gyms around the world tell him some athletes are now experimenting with balloons of untainted urine hidden in orifices below the waist. "It's very unfortunate it has come to this," he says, "but we may have to ask for mirrors during tests so we can see all the angles."

This is disconcerting news for some athletes who say there are already privacy issues aplenty. U.S. swim star Jenny Thompson has dealt with drug testers while walking out the door with a date. She also found them waiting in her apartment after returning from taking her medical boards at Columbia University, where she's a medical student.

Swimmer Natalie Coughlin, gold medalist in the 100-meter backstroke Monday and a member of the team Wednesday that set a world record in the 4x200-meter freestyle relay, was working on a take-home final exam at the University of California at Berkeley, when the testers knocked. Nature had just called, so the intruders made themselves comfortable, she says.

"There I was, trying to write an essay on the political ecology of the Third World, with these two drug testers chatting away in my living room," she says. "It was really irritating."

For track diva Marion Jones, winner of five medals in Sydney whose appearance here has been clouded in a drug scandal, the idea of mirrors is more than disconcerting. Ms. Jones, who will participate in the long jump and perhaps other events, denies she's ever used drugs. "Our privacy is definitely questioned when you have to go into your doping test, take everything off and turn around," she says. "In some countries, there's somebody sitting across from me who barely speaks English."
 

Pex

Banned
Aug 21, 2003
1,161
0
0
Originally posted by: Amused
http://online.wsj.com/public/page/0,,public_home_search,00.html#SB109295200514896573

It's the Knock All Olympians Dread
Random Drug Testers Call At Inopportune Moments; Paper Cups, Ruined Dates

By PETER WALDMAN, Staff Reporter, The Wall Street Journal

ATHENS -- Swimmer Gary Hall Jr. was hosting a British lord for dinner.

Volleyball player Tom Hoff was negotiating a business contract.

And Jarred Rome, a discus thrower, was fast asleep at dawn before a big meet. "You know that feeling when you open your eyes and somebody's standing over you?" says the 300-pound hurler. "I about floored the guy."

Instead, Mr. Rome did what fellow U.S. Olympians Hall and Hoff and hundreds of other elite athletes have done in similar predicaments: He led the uninvited guests into the bathroom and urinated into a paper cup while they watched. "It's always strange when the guy's staring right at you," says Aaron Peirsol, who scooped up his second backstroke gold medal last night.

No athlete wants to get busted cheating with drugs. Yet staying clean has its own humiliations. Either way, everyone gets caught with their pants down.

Sports federations in many countries, including the U.S., now require athletes to submit to surprise, year-round drug testing to compete. For many American athletes, that means filing notice of their daily whereabouts for three months in advance with the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency. Evading "drug-control officers," as the sample-gatherers are called, or refusing to provide a specimen on demand, can lead to suspension from competition.

Unpleasant Surprises

Cooperating with the drug testers, though, can lead to other indignities.

Mr. Hall, a favorite for a gold medal in the 50-meter freestyle race today, was eating dinner recently in his Florida home with the visiting lord and some other British dignitaries when the doorbell rang. His wife was serving her specialty; they'd uncorked a fine bottle of Pinot Noir.

The drug testers were friendly but insistent. "They set down their paraphernalia on the table next to the Cornish game hen," Mr. Hall recalls. The testers lingered at the candlelit table for a half-hour or so, bantering with guests about real estate, as Mr. Hall guzzled several glasses of water.

"Any time people are waiting around for you to pee in a cup, it's awkward," the swimmer says.

Mr. Hoff, the volleyballer, was in a meeting in Greece, negotiating a contract to play professional ball. He wasn't surprised when the drug samplers appeared; they had roused his sleeping family -- "the dogs go crazy, the kids cry" -- a half-dozen times with early-morning visits over the previous year, he says. But he was angry.

"If I were a businessman in a meeting like that," says Mr. Hoff, "I guarantee you they'd never barge in. As an Olympic athlete, these people have the power to drag me out of anything."

No-notice testing -- any place, any time -- is the only way to deter and detect drug cheating, says Rune Andersen, director of standards and testing for the World Anti-Doping Agency, the lead antidrug body for international sports. He says most drug testers do their best to find athletes at their training facilities, and track them down at home or elsewhere only when that isn't possible. "Knocking on an athlete's door is a last resort," he says. "That's the price top athletes sometimes have to pay."

The element of surprise is crucial, Mr. Andersen says, because determined cheaters, if given as little as six hours' notice before a test, have many ways to mask their drug use. That's why International Olympic Committee officials were so alarmed when Greece's top two sprinters, Costas Kenteris and Katerina Thanou, missed a surprise drug test on the eve of the Games, and then claimed to have been hospitalized for a motorcycle accident.

They offered to have their urine tested in the hospital, but the IOC declined, cognizant of the many ways to purge banned substances with drugs and catheters. At an IOC hearing Wednesday, both Greek sprinters, while professing innocence, withdrew from the Games and apologized to their crestfallen countrymen.

The fight against drug cheaters is a battle of cat and mouse, says Mr. Andersen, who spent 15 years in the field gathering specimens before becoming an administrator. Some gyms post watchmen, with intricate signaling systems using flags and radios, to alert athletes to arriving drug testers, he says. And athletes themselves are resorting to bizarre and intricate methods of evasion.

During one unannounced test of an Iranian weightlifter in Norway, Mr. Andersen noticed the man's upper body shifting unusually. The specimen he produced felt suspiciously cool as well. So Mr. Andersen demanded the Iranian remove his shirt and produce a second sample.

The weightlifter refused, claiming his religion forbids nudity. When he finally relented, he tested positive for anabolic steroids and was banned from competition for three years. It turned out his first negative sample had come from a balloon lodged in the man's armpit, with a tube running down his arm to fill the paper cup.

'It Has Come to This'

Indeed, Mr. Andersen says informants in gyms around the world tell him some athletes are now experimenting with balloons of untainted urine hidden in orifices below the waist. "It's very unfortunate it has come to this," he says, "but we may have to ask for mirrors during tests so we can see all the angles."

This is disconcerting news for some athletes who say there are already privacy issues aplenty. U.S. swim star Jenny Thompson has dealt with drug testers while walking out the door with a date. She also found them waiting in her apartment after returning from taking her medical boards at Columbia University, where she's a medical student.

Swimmer Natalie Coughlin, gold medalist in the 100-meter backstroke Monday and a member of the team Wednesday that set a world record in the 4x200-meter freestyle relay, was working on a take-home final exam at the University of California at Berkeley, when the testers knocked. Nature had just called, so the intruders made themselves comfortable, she says.

"There I was, trying to write an essay on the political ecology of the Third World, with these two drug testers chatting away in my living room," she says. "It was really irritating."

For track diva Marion Jones, winner of five medals in Sydney whose appearance here has been clouded in a drug scandal, the idea of mirrors is more than disconcerting. Ms. Jones, who will participate in the long jump and perhaps other events, denies she's ever used drugs. "Our privacy is definitely questioned when you have to go into your doping test, take everything off and turn around," she says. "In some countries, there's somebody sitting across from me who barely speaks English."


Awww I guess they have to put up with that to make their 7-figure incomes.
 

DAM

Diamond Member
Jan 10, 2000
6,102
1
76
It is the price they pay, plain and easy solution don't compete no more random visist.



dam()
 

Amused

Elite Member
Apr 14, 2001
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Let me get this straight. You folks have no problem with the testers coming into these folks houses WHILE THEY SLEEP and standing OVER THEIR BEDS, and waking them THE DAY BEFORE A MEET to take a test???????
 

halbe

Member
Aug 6, 2004
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I think when you are picked to represent your country in the Olympics, you have to give some things up.
 

Amused

Elite Member
Apr 14, 2001
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I guess the old saying, "it depends on who's bull is getting gored" really fits here.

How many of you would agree to this kind of intrusion for your job, or ambition?

I can understand random drug testing. What I cannot understand is walking into people's homes while they sleep, or breaking up formal dinner parties.

I wonder how many times they have walked in while someone was having sex?
 

n0cmonkey

Elite Member
Jun 10, 2001
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Random drug testing is fine with me. Invading a home (sitting there and chatting during an exam, or during someone's dinner party) is just ridiculous. Being inside of the home without the athlete there should just be criminal. And paper cups? Never seen someone use a paper cup for anything that important.
 

bigalt

Golden Member
Oct 12, 2000
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i don't know why anybody puts up with it, for a chance at a couple years' fame.
 

isekii

Lifer
Mar 16, 2001
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Originally posted by: Amused
I guess the old saying, "it depends on who's bull is getting gored" really fits here.

How many of you would agree to this kind of intrusion for your job, or ambition?

I can understand random drug testing. What I cannot understand is walking into people's homes while they sleep, or breaking up formal dinner parties.

I wonder how many times they have walked in while someone was having sex?

Walking into people's homes while they sleep ? I highly doubt they'd be breaking in and entering.
They probably wake them up wee hours in the night. The whole point of random drug testing is for it to be random. Random = anytime, anyday :D
 
Jan 31, 2002
40,819
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Originally posted by: Taggart
Originally posted by: n0cmonkey
I'd ask the sampler to hold the cup.

Hahaha and 'miss' the cup :laugh:

Uh, yeah, because we all needed that explained, as absolutely no one could understand what was being hinted at without it being spelled out. :roll:

- M4H
 

Amused

Elite Member
Apr 14, 2001
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Originally posted by: bigalt
i don't know why anybody puts up with it, for a chance at a couple years' fame.

The vast majority of athletes in the Olympics get little to no fame at all. And no endorsement money after they win... IF they win.
 

Amused

Elite Member
Apr 14, 2001
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Originally posted by: isekii
Originally posted by: Amused
I guess the old saying, "it depends on who's bull is getting gored" really fits here.

How many of you would agree to this kind of intrusion for your job, or ambition?

I can understand random drug testing. What I cannot understand is walking into people's homes while they sleep, or breaking up formal dinner parties.

I wonder how many times they have walked in while someone was having sex?

Walking into people's homes while they sleep ? I highly doubt they'd be breaking in and entering.
They probably wake them up wee hours in the night. The whole point of random drug testing is for it to be random. Random = anytime, anyday :D

Reading comprehension is your friend:

And Jarred Rome, a discus thrower, was fast asleep at dawn before a big meet. "You know that feeling when you open your eyes and somebody's standing over you?" says the 300-pound hurler. "I about floored the guy."
 

isekii

Lifer
Mar 16, 2001
28,578
3
81
Originally posted by: Amused
Originally posted by: isekii
Originally posted by: Amused
I guess the old saying, "it depends on who's bull is getting gored" really fits here.

How many of you would agree to this kind of intrusion for your job, or ambition?

I can understand random drug testing. What I cannot understand is walking into people's homes while they sleep, or breaking up formal dinner parties.

I wonder how many times they have walked in while someone was having sex?

Walking into people's homes while they sleep ? I highly doubt they'd be breaking in and entering.
They probably wake them up wee hours in the night. The whole point of random drug testing is for it to be random. Random = anytime, anyday :D

Reading comprehension is your friend:

And Jarred Rome, a discus thrower, was fast asleep at dawn before a big meet. "You know that feeling when you open your eyes and somebody's standing over you?" says the 300-pound hurler. "I about floored the guy."

THat's what the article says but do they actually pack a lock smith to break in ?
I highly doubt it. If they're housing at dormatories, i'm sure they'd have access, but in their own homes ?
 

mugs

Lifer
Apr 29, 2003
48,920
46
91
Originally posted by: Amused
How many of you would agree to this kind of intrusion for your job, or ambition?

It's unfortunate that there are so many unscrupulous athletes that they're forced to take the measures that they do. The testers don't know what the athletes will be doing when they show up, at least they attempt to do the testing at the athlete's training facility. Marion Jones doesn't get any sympathy from me at all after the hissy fit she threw when she was implicated in a doping scandal. And who cares what language the tester speaks?
 

Ornery

Lifer
Oct 9, 1999
20,022
17
81
"It turned out his first negative sample had come from a balloon lodged in the man's armpit, with a tube running down his arm to fill the paper cup."

It's too bad mugs, but Amused has a REALLY hard time understanding that it's the scofflaws and other scum who cause authorities to make life difficult for the rest of us.

Speaking of reading comprehension, I'm still having a helluva time finding where that article says these drug-control officers broke into a private residence. :roll:
 

Amused

Elite Member
Apr 14, 2001
56,720
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Originally posted by: Ornery


It's too bad mugs, but Amused has a REALLY hard time understanding that it's the scofflaws and other scum who cause authorities to make life difficult for the rest of us.

Let's just step away from the testing of athletes here and discuss this on a broad scale, shall we?

The innocent should not be made to pay for the crimes of others.

If your attempts to catch criminals violate my rights and freedoms, they go over the line.

If you are content to sit idly by while your freedoms are eroded in the name of "catching criminals," fine. But do not expect me, or many others, to do the same.

And a funny thing has happened with all these rights and freedoms we have given up... crime has only gotten worse.

Funny how that happens, isn't it?
 

djheater

Lifer
Mar 19, 2001
14,637
2
0
Of course it goes to far, but your attachment to individual liberty is, in this argument, misplaced. They choose to be athletes and this is part of what they choose. They could choose not to be olymipic athletes, or choose not to have dinner parties... They are trying to have the best of both worlds and it's not possible. Hopefully medical technology will progress and urine tests will be a thing of the past.
 

Amused

Elite Member
Apr 14, 2001
56,720
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Originally posted by: djheater
Of course it goes to far, but your attachment to individual liberty is, in this argument, misplaced. They choose to be athletes and this is part of what they choose. They could choose not to be olymipic athletes, or choose not to have dinner parties... They are trying to have the best of both worlds and it's not possible. Hopefully medical technology will progress and urine tests will be a thing of the past.

Don't get me wrong, I know they volunteered for this when they signed up.

It's not the drug testing itself I'm commenting on. I know that is done by voluntary contract. It is how it is carried out that has me wondering if it goes too far.

My rant with Ornery goes beyond that to non-contractual loss of rights.
 

Ornery

Lifer
Oct 9, 1999
20,022
17
81
On a broad scale, we pay the most in extra taxes for policing our neighborhoods, not loss of freedoms. I'm still free to drive down any street I choose, but speeders are subjected to ticketing. I'll gladly pay the taxes to help apprehend them. And, it's NOT my fault we have the need for more patrol cars, it's the speeder's fault. Put the blame where it belongs!

If I have to submit to a piss test for my next job, I also blame the scofflaws for this, not the employer. Passing a physical for employment doesn't seem to bother people, so why should drug testing? I'm damn glad train engineers, airline pilots are tested, and I wouldn't want it any other way.