The long-standing practice of having A and B samples for testing in doping controls could potentially be dropped in future, the World Anti-Doping Agency’s David Howman said today.
Howman said at the SportAccord conference that the high price of testing made it worthwhile to re-examine if the practice should continue.
“We spend half our time justifying costs. Here's a way in which you could save a lot of costs and not hurt any person's individual rights or opportunities,” he told AP. “I don't know if there's a resistance or not but it would certainly make a lot of difference economically.”
Under the current system, a rider’s urine sample is split into two equal halves. The A and the B test are sealed in front of the sportsperson, then transported to the testing lab. The A sample is tested and if an adverse finding is recorded, the athlete then has the possibility to have the B sample analysed. They are only sanctioned if the B sample is also positive.
According to Howman, the number of times there is a difference between the two is ‘almost zero’. When that does happen, he said that it was often due to degrading of the sample over time, suggesting any differences in the past are down to false negatives of the B sample rather than false positives of the A test.
Howman also pointed out the difference between sporting law and criminal law, suggesting that athletes may be given too many rights. “People can go to jail on the basis of one bodily sample being collected, and sport really is on its own in collecting two samples,” he said.
The proposal may be met with resistance among athletes, who will be concerned that their rights are being diminished. Howman has said that he would like to see wide consultation on the matter, which would be debated during the 2012 review of the WADA Code.
If changes were accepted, he said that they would not be introduced until some time after January 1, 2015.