The Paris 2024 Olympic Games will bring together more than 10,000 athletes competing in 32 different sports, all of whom will be subject to the rules set out in the World Anti-Doping Code .

The International Testing Agency (ITA) will be responsible for organising and managing all the controls at this major sporting event, which is returning to the European continent after 12 years.

Great deployment to avoid traps

More than 1,000 professionals will be involved in the various stages of this fight against doping. Around 800 will act as chaperones to inform athletes and accompany them throughout the process.

Each competition venue will have a specific space for these controls, where some 360 ​​agents will carry out blood and urine tests on athletes following the International Standard for Testing and Investigations (ISTI) .

One new feature is that, after having been launched during the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games, the dried blood spot (DBS) sampling method will also be used in Paris 2024. It involves collecting a small amount of blood, usually by pricking a capillary, which is then dried on special absorbent paper.

Introduced as a complementary detection tool, it is a minimally invasive procedure that allows for more efficient transport of blood samples compared to the traditional method and that represents savings in storage and shipping costs to laboratories, among other advantages.

An unshakeable 2% of positive cases

Since the creation of the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) in 1999, there has been a strong anti-doping movement among sports organizations and government authorities.

Although important steps have been taken in recent years, this objective is far from being fully achieved: there is evidence that elite athletes continue to use banned substances.

To give a recent example, the Chinese Swimming Association has selected 11 swimmers for the Paris Games who tested positive in 2021 for trimetazidine , a banned cardiac drug. Although the tests were carried out in the months leading up to the Tokyo 2020 Games, the results were only released this year, sparking a huge international controversy.

In fact, for many years now, the proportion of doping detections in Olympic disciplines has remained stable at around 2% (2 out of 100 tests are positive). And this is despite the fact that the number of tests continues to increase year after year in most sports .

The most monitored sports

Although anabolic agents (substances that reduce body fat and increase muscle size and strength) are the most frequently detected substances, it can be said that each sporting discipline has its “specialty” .

To put it simply, physical performance is usually dependent on the combination of four main components: skill, strength, endurance and recovery. There are drugs on the market that can improve these four dimensions, which determines the use of prohibited substances in each sport:

• Activities that demand maximum strength and explosiveness are more susceptible to androgen doping through its effect on increasing muscle mass and strength.
• Sports that require aerobic endurance may seek help from blood doping or other strategies that artificially increase the oxygen-carrying capacity of the blood.
• Contact sports and sports that involve intense physical activity can be improved by growth hormone and glucocorticoids, as they accelerate tissue recovery from injury.
• Disciplines defined by skill and concentration may benefit from medications that reduce anxiety, tremor, inattention, or fatigue.

At Paris 2024, the most closely watched individual sports will be cycling, weightlifting, boxing, triathlon, wrestling and athletics, as they are the ones with the highest proportion of positive cases according to WADA statistics. In the team sports section, rugby, basketball and handball will receive the most coverage.

Strict criteria

This is where the importance of the Technical Document for Sport Specific Analysis (TDSSA) comes into play , a technical document prepared by WADA that is regularly reviewed in consultation with anti-doping organisations and accredited laboratories.

The TDSSA determines the minimum level of analysis for prohibited substances and methods in each discipline based on a prior assessment of the existing physiological risk. They are classified into three groups:

• Erythropoietin receptor agonists (ERAs). These mimic the action of erythropoietin (EPO), a natural hormone that stimulates the production of red blood cells in the bone marrow, helping to transport more oxygen throughout the body.
• Growth hormone (GH). As its name suggests, it stimulates growth, cell reproduction and cell regeneration. It plays a fundamental role in the development of the human body, affecting various metabolic processes.
• Growth hormone releasing factors (GHRF): These are substances that stimulate the release and secretion of the aforementioned hormone.

A helping hand from AI

Looking to the future, artificial intelligence (AI) can become a tool to help improve detection systems.

Specifically, business informatics professor Wolfgang Maaß, in collaboration with WADA, has developed three AI-based projects with promising results.

Based on the vast amount of data generated during tests – both biochemical and otherwise – as well as related activities and behaviours leading up to these tests, an AI model can be trained to analyse patterns associated with doping. This makes it possible to identify any signs of manipulation more quickly and reliably.

Currently, assessing the incidence of doping using test results is an objective and robust method. However, it suffers from the limitations of the small detection window, the analytical capacity of WADA-accredited laboratories, and the inability to differentiate the legal use of prohibited substances for therapeutic purposes from their intentional use to gain a competitive advantage.

Retrospective testing

Inevitably, some athletes will be deprived of a podium finish in Paris because of cheaters who use banned substances that cannot be detected in doping controls. For this reason, the World Anti-Doping Code allows a sample to be analysed up to ten years after it was collected. The IOC first gave the green light to the use of so-called retrospective testing at the 2004 Athens Olympics.

This deterrent is due to the fact that controls have failed to keep pace with innovation in cheating. There is a lag period between the detection of a new performance-enhancing substance and the development of a test capable of identifying it with scientific accuracy.

In short, doping is a problem that threatens the credibility of sport and the upcoming Olympic Games in Paris, but all human and technological means are still being used to prevent it.

Author Bios: Millan Aguilar Navarro is Professor of Physical Activity and Sports Sciences (CAFyD) and Coordinator of the “Doping in Sport” Stable Research Group at Francisco de Vitoria University and Jorge Dominguez Carrion is an Anti-Doping Specialist and Doping Control Officer at the Polytechnic University of Madrid (UPM)