UK Sport does most of the testing in Britain and forwards positive cases to the governing bodies of the athletes concerned. The onus is then on the governing body to take appropriate action. It should be relatively straightforward, but rarely is. Athletes who test positive invariably protest their innocence, and far too often governing bodies allow the principle of strict liability to be compromised.
Let us explain this principle, for it remains the core precept of any anti-doping policy. If an athlete is found to have a banned drug in his or her sample, they are considered responsible for its presence. Any other interpretation demolishes the anti-doping policy, and it is to UK Athletics’ enduring shame that it once campaigned to have the rule of strict liability changed.
After UK Sport does its job and passes the case to the governing body, the hearings and appeals begin. These exist to protect the individual rights of the athlete but are used to fudge or prolong the case. Resolution can take a year or two and often the sentencing reflects an athlete’s standing: one with medal potential at a major championships is likely to be treated more leniently than a no-hoper.
In difficult circumstances, UK Sport does an excellent job. It conducts the tests — 1,307 for the most recent quarter — and pressurises the various governing bodies to deal with positive findings. Verroken is central to what is good about UK Sport’s anti-doping policy: she is committed to drug-free sport and to exposing the cheats.
Innocently, you might think: “Well, that’s her job and isn’t every national official fully behind the anti-doping movement?” If only they were. You go through UK Sport’s quarterly report and the ambivalence is there. UK Sport is not permitted to name athletes who test positive, even those sanctioned by their respective governing bodies. Some, of course, are let off without explanation, others are given suspensions so lenient it is clear that their governing bodies consider them innocent in all but the most technical sense.
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Evident, too, is the difficulty that UK Sport encounters with its out-of-competition testing. For this to work effectively, athletes must keep their governing bodies notified concerning their whereabouts. Before any athlete can be deemed unavailable for testing, sample collectors must turn up three times at the address supplied by the athlete.
As the level of out-of-competition testing without advanced notice rises, so too has the level of unavailability. Although there is a responsibility on the governing body to investigate all such cases, nobody has been suspended following an “unavailable” case. Through the report, Verroken wants us to know that all may not be as clean as it seems in British sport. The governing bodies would prefer her to say nothing.
Ultimately, the head of UK Sport anti-doping is caught between the devil and the deep blue sea. She must persuade the governing bodies to commit to anti-doping, but can only achieve this by working with them. She must remain unequivocal in her anti-doping stance, yet she cannot alienate those who equivocate. And the bottom line never changes: nobody thanks her for the work she does.
So let this column be the first. Without Michele Verroken, Britain wouldn’t have an anti-doping policy worthy of the name.