As the publicity and penalties surrounding performance enhancing substances reaches fever pitch, is drug testing a step too far or a necessary evil?           

The biggest risk posed by strict enforcement lies in the possible punishment of innocent individuals. Handing out bans or suspensions for missing drugs tests, possibly by honest mistake, could have non-cheating athletes prevented from competing - and that would be a high price to pay.

Drug testing everyone  seems the most effective way to keep the Olympics drug free, which should always be a high priority in ensuring fairness. But is it fair to penalise athletes, not for failing drugs tests but for missing them altogether or through testing positive for  a substance they have either not taken nor not knowingly taken?

'Is the risk of false accusations the price that must be paid to keep the Olympics drug free?'


In 1999 and 2000 a rash of positive test results for Nandrolone, a banned steroid, caused controversy when many of the athletes in question denied taking the banned steroid. Nandrolone was found to be produced naturally in the body to such levels as to trigger a ‘false positive’ reading, calling the reliability of drug testing into question.

Bobsleigh racer Lenny Paul was cleared after claims his Nandrolone levels could have been raised by eating beef from cattle treated with the steroid. If drug testing can trigger false positive readings, then an athlete’s career may be unfairly ended over a 'crime' they did not commit, not to mention their reputation being tarnished.

Is the risk of false accusations the price that must be paid to keep the Olympics drug free? Is there no other way to keep things fair and non corrupt?

Until such a time that the governing bodies can give us a drugs testing programme we can have total faith in the issue of drugs testing will always be controversial.

For the time being, though, it is the only fair way to keep sport free from doping.