Investigators could have just six hours to catch a cheat as athletics’ war on doping continues

Athletics Integrity Unit has revealed that investigators could only have six hours to catch a cheat, as they continue to fight doping in athletics.

The war on doping in athletics continues. Picture: Kirill KUDRYAVTSEV / AFP

THE Australian investigator fighting the war on drugs in athletics says testers sometimes only have a six-hour window to catch a cheat.

Brett Clothier, the head of the Athletics Integrity Unit based in Monte Carlo, says while the sport has made significant inroads and is cleaner than it has ever been, they still have a long way to go. The AIU focuses on the top 500 athletes who are in a registered testing pool with their movements monitored at all times.

“Doping is a problem in athletics as it is in a lot of sports,” Clothier said. “What we can say is we’re doing more than ever to uncover the dopers.

“We have got a track record which would suggest we’re capable of catching cheaters who are operating at the top levels of the sport.

“Throughout 2023 and into 2024 a lot of top level athletes were banned for doping and won’t be competing in Paris. Do we catch every single athlete that is doping? No, and we’re not trying to hide away from that fact.

“But what we can say is we’re got really credible systems and processes in place to uncover doping where we can.”

The Athletics Integrity Unit declares there’s more work to do to stop doping in athletics. Picture: Patrick Smith/Getty Images

The biggest challenge facing Clothier’s unit is the short detection windows to catch cheats because of the advancement in illegal substances.

“The minute an athlete takes a performance enhancing drug it is a race against the clock,” Clothier said. “We have to test them at the right time, for the right substance to get a positive test. As we get better at our job the athletes respond to using different forms of doping, whether it is micro-dosing of specific substances like peptides and testosterone that can be washed out of the system very quickly.

“(The window) can be as short as six hours and up to 48 hours. Our test planning is highly specific to every single athlete, all 500 of those athletes in the registered pool.

“There is an individualised testing plan with a test plan in very short windows, sometimes it is within two days, sometimes it is within one day, sometimes it’s to the hour.

“We are gathering intelligence all the time, monitoring performance, monitoring whereabouts, athletes’ movements and patterns of behaviour. Clothier ran the AFL’s integrity unit for eight years before joining the AIU in 2017 and he says the landscape in athletics now compared to then is “chalk and cheese”.

“Across the board we have uncovered many high-level cases, almost a third of our cases are world championship medallists or Olympic medallists, There is no question the deterrence level and proving you can uncover doping at the top end, which doesn’t happen in other sports, has made our sport cleaner than it has been before,” he said.