Abstract
Athletics is a highly diverse sport that contains a set of disciplines grouped into jumps, throws, races of varying distances, and combined events. From a physiological standpoint, the physical capabilities linked to success are quite different among disciplines, with varying involvements of muscle strength, muscle power, and endurance. Thus, the use of banned substances in athletics might be dictated by physical dimensions of each discipline. Thus, the aim of this investigation was to analyse the number and distribution of adverse analytical findings per drug class in athletic disciplines. The data included in this investigation were gathered from the Anti-Doping Testing Figure Report made available by the World Anti-Doping Agency (from 2016 to 2018). Interestingly, there were no differences in the frequency of adverse findings (overall,~0.95%, range from 0.77 to 1.70%) among disciplines despite long distance runners having the highest number of samples analysed per year (~9812 samples/year). Sprinters and throwers presented abnormally high proportions of adverse analytical findings within the group of anabolic agents (p < 0.01); middle- and long-distance runners presented atypically high proportions of findings related to peptide hormones and growth factors (p < 0.01); racewalkers presented atypically high proportions of banned diuretics and masking agents (p = 0.05). These results suggest that the proportion of athletes that are using banned substances is similar among the different disciplines of athletics. However, there are substantial differences in the class of drugs more commonly used in each discipline. This information can be used to effectively enhance anti-doping testing protocols in athletics.
Highlights
Athletics is a highly diverse sport that contains a set of disciplines grouped into jumps, throws, races of different distances, and combined events
The main outcomes of this investigation were (a) long distance runners and sprinters had the highest number of samples analysed with more than 6000 doping control tests conducted each year
Race walkers and road runners had less than 1000 doping control tests per year; (b) there were no statistical differences in the proportion of adverse analytical findings among the different disciplines
Summary
Athletics is a highly diverse sport that contains a set of disciplines grouped into jumps, throws, races of different distances, and combined events. The physical capabilities linked to success in athletics are different among disciplines—with varying contributions of muscle strength, muscle power, and endurance.[1,2] On one hand, jumps, throws, combined events, and sprint races up to 400 m require high values of speed and muscle power while body characteristics such as height or elevated. The evolution of track and field records in the last century has been uneven.[3,4] It has been speculated that the use of banned substances might have contributed to the atypical achievements found in some disciplines at very specific moments.[5] In this regard, it has been previously speculated that the use of banned substances in each track and field discipline might be dictated by the discipline's physiological dimensions and performance determinants,[6] but to date, this has not been properly confirmed with real and objective data
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