Doping in Athletics Is Far Worse Than Anyone Is Willing to Admit

Every few months, an athlete tests positive and athletics declares the system is working. But the athletes who get caught represent the tip of an enormous iceberg that the sport's governing bodies and anti-doping agencies lack the resources, technology, or perhaps the will to fully investigate. The uncomfortable truth is that doping in athletics is far more prevalent than official positive test rates suggest.

Anti-doping testing catches athletes who use banned substances carelessly — wrong timing, wrong dosage, wrong masking agent. It does not catch athletes using microdosing protocols, gene therapies, or designer substances that stay ahead of testing capabilities. The biological passport has improved detection but remains limited by the fundamental challenge that sophisticated dopers are often better resourced than the testing systems pursuing them.

Russia's systematic doping program was exposed in 2015. A decade later, the systemic conditions that enabled it — authoritarian sporting cultures, inadequate independent testing, and political interference in anti-doping — exist in multiple countries that haven't been subjected to equivalent scrutiny. The assumption that Russia was unique rather than representative is dangerously naive.

The doping crisis creates a toxic environment for clean athletes:

Athletics cannot solve its doping problem until it honestly assesses its scale. Claiming that the sport is mostly clean because positive test rates are low is like claiming a city has low crime because few criminals are caught. The first step toward a cleaner sport is admitting that the current system fails to catch most doping — and then investing the resources necessary to close the gap.