New Anti-Doping Program Will Be Intelligence Driven

By Adam Kopet

The Abbott World Marathon Majors and the Athletics Integrity Unit (AIU) announced a new anti-doping program Tuesday that will bring additional resources and a new direction to the fight against doping in the world's biggest marathons.

The new anti-doping program will bring an additional monetary investment from the Abbott World Marathon Majors races (Berlin, Boston, Chicago, London, New York City and Tokyo). The added funds will allow the AIU to expand to about 20 staff members, according to Chris Chavez of Sports Illustrated, with seven staff members focused on gathering and analyzing intelligence and six focused on test planning.

With the new funds comes a shift in how testing will be conducted. Rather than increase in-competition testing at events, there will be focus on testing athletes when they are most likely to be doping. Random drug tests will be replaced with carefully targeted tests.

Additionally, athletes' support personal could be the targets of investigations, as they can both aid in the doping process and benefit financially from the results of using performance enhancing drugs.

Properly administered, an intelligence-driven approach to anti-doping could help catch athletes cheating before their big races. That would help prevent cheating athletes from either getting away with cheating at major events or getting caught after the fact, having medals redistributed and trying to recoup prize money.

The new program is expected to include a testing pool of about 150 elite athletes, many of whom primarily compete on the roads and in major marathons.