I’ve just come back from this two-day conference at Twickenham stadium. To
get there I waited once again at the bus stop I used to spend my teenage life hanging
around – a situation made me feel both strangely young and
old at the same time. But what of the conference? You might expect a set of
talks from regulators and lawyers to be dry and drab. However, at times more
sparks flew than even at the most vitriolic academic meeting. Actually the
latter are usually sedate – though intellectually stimulating events – with
tempers and egos well in check (at least until the bar opens).
So what caused the fuss at Twickenham? Surprisingly it wasn’t the Maria
Sharapova meldonium affair. This just led to incredulity as to how someone
would keep taking a drug – for whatever reason – when it was so clearly
advertised as coming on to the banned list and an effective test had clearly
been developed. The fact that Sharapova has been joined by 99 other athletes in
the space of a few months suggests either a massive breakdown in anti doping
education or a significant level of stupidity amongst dopers.
So who did get everyone excited? Not Dick Pound for once with his usual
erudite exposition of Russia’s recent failings. Not even Jonathan Taylor from
Bird & Bird who did his best to wind up – well everyone really. No they
were both upstaged by the showing of Hajo Seppelt’s new ARD documentary; this
revealed that banned coaches were still active in Russia. He followed this up
with some direct barbs at the WADA president, Sir Craig Reedie, accusing him of
firing one of his top investigators and having a conflict of interest between his
role at WADA and the IOC (where he is a Vice President).
I felt a little bit sheepish giving my own talk immediately after Hajo’s
Tour de Force. Especially as what I was talking about essentially amounted to
studying not doping. I discussed whether much of doping’s effectiveness could
be due to the power of the placebo
effect i.e. the athlete runs faster because they believe they have a secret advantage. This contrasts with
the nocebo effect, where the athlete
runs slower because they believe their opponent is doping and hence can’t be
beaten. The problem is to do the definitive placebo doping study I would need
to give EPO to a elite athletes whilst telling them I was giving them a meaningless
injection. This would reveal exactly how much of EPO’s benefit is due to its
biological, rather than its psychological effect. But it is hard to see a
research ethics committee agreeing to this level of deception. Such a pain when
morality gets in the way of a good piece of science!
