Study Concludes: Roughly Half of Surveyed Athletes Use Doping

The British Journal of Sports Medicine has recently published a study conducted in August of 2017 targeting two past events: the World Championships in Athletics in Daegu, South Korea in August 2011 and the 12th Quadrennial Pan-Arab games in Doha, Qatar in December 2011.

Among the 2167 athletes surveyed, the estimated prevalence of past-year doping use was at 43.6% for WCA participants and a staggering 57.1% for PAG. Meanwhile, past-year supplement use clocked at 70.1% among PAG participants.

“We were shocked by the results,” admitted the study co-author and UNC statistician Jay Schaffer. “It’s just a bombshell in the world of sports that this is being published”, adds Schaffer. “It’s unheard of that athletes are cheating at this kind of rate.”

The study was sanctioned by the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA), but the public release of the report was delayed by negotiations between WADA and the International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF). I addition to Schaffer, the study was conducted by experts from Harvard and European universities.

More importantly, with just over a week remaining until 2018 Winter Olympics get underway in PyeongChang, the new findings have yet to yield any type of disciplinary response or further investigations from athletic governing bodies, while the Russian Olympic squad is forced to compete under a neutral banner amidst multiple doping allegations.