Category: Drugs

Doping in Sport: Man Vs Horse

24/7/2014

By Robbie Butler

In 1998 the Tour de France made its one and only visit to Ireland. As a teenager, I vaguely remember watching the riders race through the streets of Waterford city. Today I recall little from the race. My one abiding memory from the race is sadly that of a doping issue, involving a team I had never heard of but still remember, Team Festina.

Many argue that 1998 was the year cycling was permanently tarnished by doping disclosures. A police investigation in France during the ’98 Tour forced two teams (Festina and TVM) to exit the race. As a result a peloton strike ensued with five teams opting to pull of the Tour in protest to the treatment of Festina and TVM riders. As a result, my interest in cycling was lost forever.

This week news broke that the Queen’s horse Estimate had tested positive for morphine. You may recall the Sir Michael Stout trained mare, the first horse in history to win the Ascot Gold Cup for a reigning monarch last year, amid joyful scenes in the Royal Box. While the story of Estimate comes as a surprise to most in racing, it is only recently that the sport was left reeling by news that 11 Godolphin trained horses had tested positive for banned anabolic steroids, including Classic winner Encke. This got me thinking. Could both sports be the victims of on-going performance enhancing drug-use?

I decided to compute at the average speed (kmph) of the winner for both the Epsom Derby (premier three-year-old flat racing in Europe) and the Tour de France for the post-war period. One would expect a marginal improvement in both events given improvements in sports technology, nutrition, sport science and training methods. The data is presented with a trend line applied to each event.

The illustration above proves to be very interesting. Since 1947, there has been little improvement in the speed or winning time (blue line) in the Epsom Derby (flat trend line). The winning horse has run the course at around 55kmph on average. One could interpret this as evidence that the sport is ‘clean’. This could also point to no improvement in training methods or horse nutrition, little innovation or improvement in jockey performance or lack of development of equipment in the horse racing industry, which could aid perfromance.

The Tour de France paints an entirely different picture. The average speed of the winning cyclist from 1947 to 1957 is recorded at 33.45kmph. Compare this to 2003-2013 where the average speed of the winner rises to 40.37kmph. That's an improvment of more than 20%. 2013 winner Bradley Wiggins rode 30% faster on average than 1947 winner Jean Robic. This could be a result of the fact that the race is roughly 25% shorter than the first post-war race, meaning riders can afford to use up more energy cycling faster. It could also point to the fact that the cycling industry has been far better over the course of the past seventy years, than those in the horse-racing industry, at technological innovation, nutrition and sports science, resulting in faster times. Or better still, maybe humanity is evolving more rapidly than our equine cousins and in the centuries ahead cyclists will complete the 2.423km covered in the Derby faster than the winning horse!

I’m not so sure....

Gaming it: Incentives, Cheating and the Grey Area in Sport

18/7/2014

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by Declan Jordan

A book I really enjoyed during my summer holiday (and would recommend highly) is Stillness and Speed by Dennis Bergkamp. It was written with David Winner, who also wrote the wonderful Brilliant Orange - The Neurotic Genius of Dutch Football.

While watching (and supporting the Dutch at the World Cup - in part influenced by Winner's earlier book) I was struck by the reaction of TV commentators and analysts to Arjen Robben's propensity to fall in a heap at the slightest touch from a defender. Even when it was clear that Robben had been fouled he made sure the referee noticed it.

I was reminded of a passage in Dennis Bergkamp's book:

In Italy you have two strikers against five defenders, so you have to find ways to protect yourself. You have to find ways of keeping the ball, doing your job properly and doing it well. So, if you are up against five defenders and you get the ball and you get a little touch, you go down. Is it cheating? In England it is cheating. In Italy it's just part of the game. So you adjust to the Italian game. It's normal. And then you come to England and you realise, wait a minute, you can't do that here. It's not acceptable. I'm not sure...I don't call it cheating. I have seen players who cheated. It's very difficult to say, but I sometimes used it. But I think most of the time I was honest.

A lot of times you get pushed or you feel a little touch and that stops you reaching the ball. If you run on you won't get a free-kick because no-one noticed it. So you have to react a little bit more. And then you get the free-kick. (You exaggerate a little to bring it to the referee's attention). But there has to be contact before I go down. I think cheating is something different. For me, cheating is if you go past the defender, there is no contact then you roll over, you go down. The schwalbe, as the Germans say. That's real cheating. I didn't do that. But if there is contact, it's a matter of how do you exaggerate? If you don't, you won't get a free-kick. If you do you might get a free-kick or a penalty or whatever.

Interviewer: But too much of that is also cheating surely?

Yes, but it's a really difficult area. For me, it's not acceptable if you don't get touched but go down because you still want a free-kick. I really don't approve of that. But where you are always battling with the defender and he's touching you and you stay on your feet, you're not going to get a free-kick. I think you have to act a little bit..."Jeez, come on ref!" There are plenty of times where a foul is committed and you don't get a free-kick. What do you call tha then? That's the other side of it. You get pushed and the referee doesn't see it. Is that cheating by the defender? That doesn't exist does it? It's cheating. He's cheating. The referee didn't see it, but he pulls you back. That is the other part of cheating, I feel. Doing something behind someone's back and that happens all the time. I got really frustrated in my first season at Arsenal. I'm definitely not a cheat and I don't think people see me in that way. (Pages 175 -176)

I think there is a lot in that long quote that explains Robben's attitude and behaviour, as well the attitude and behaviour of other players and commentators. It's quite interesting to me how Bergkamp refers to 'diving' or at least 'exaggerating' in the context of doing his job properly and doing it well. It's also clear from this passage that cheating is not a black and white issue. There are cultural differences. The label of cheating is contingent on the circumstances. For example, handling the ball in the middle of the field in a mid-table league game (that may even eventually lead to a goal) is not considered cheating in the way that handling the ball in the opposition's penalty area in World Cup play-off game in Stade de France might be.

I made a presentation to the UCC Economics Society conference last February that addressed this grey area in cheating from an economic perspective. I've saved the presentation to YouTube and it can be seen below.

The central argument I make is based on questioning an implicit assumption in the classical economic approach (attributable to Gary Becker) that sees cheating - and other crimes - as a sort of cost-benefit analysis. A potential cheater will (perhaps sub-consciously) calculate the costs of being caught (a red card or the opprobrium of fans) times the likelihood of being caught (is the ref looking). This will be weighed against the benefits of cheating (getting a penalty or stopping an opponent from scoring). This assumes though that the cheater knows each of these elements. Perhaps this is not unrealistic. On this blog we've already seen work on the cost of a red card.

However, the other assumption implicit in this approach is that the cheater knows whether the action he or she is about to take is cheating. This isn't an issue perhaps when we talk about taking down a player that's through on goal or blocking a shot on the goal line or injecting oneself with EPO. But what about something like diving or losing a game to get what one feels is a better draw in a subsequent round? Can these be agreed to be cheating? Dennis Bergkamp alludes to differences in culture between Italy and England determining whether the same actions on the pitch were cheating or not.

A paper referred to in my presentation by Burrus, McGoldrick and Shuhmann in 2007 (subscription required) finds a difference in perceptions and self-reporting of cheating among students before and after definitions of cheating are provided. This suggests to me that a definition of cheating is needed. I suggest a distinction between cheating and gaming where cheating is the breaking of rules to gain advantage while gaming is the breaking of etiquette to gain advantage. The latter is not cheating - even if it may be unsporting. It is up to sports bodies to decide by codifying their rules what behaviour they wish to punish. They cannot then punish players who seek advantage while observing the rules set out by the sports bodies.

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Anti-Doping Test Figures

10/2/2014

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By John Considine

The Irish Sports Council (ISC) annual report provides a range of details on the Anti-Doping tests they conduct. This post examines the National Programme Testing Statistics for 2012. The table opposite lists the sports that had at least 30 tests conducted. The sports are presented in order of the number of tests conducted. Athletics had the largest number of tests conducted (158) and the sport accounted for over 20% of all of the tests on the National Programme. Athletics, Cycling, GAA and Rugby between them account for over half of all the test conducted. The figure for GAA is for the male games in hurling and football. It excludes the 4 tests on camogie players and 2 tests on players from Ladies Gaelic Football.

The ISC decompose the figures between Urine test and Blood tests. The table below lists the top sports for each type of test. Three sports make the top-5 for both urine tests and blood tests. These sports are Athletics, Cycling and GAA. The other sports to make the top-5 Urine tests are Swimming and Boxing. In terms of blood tests, Rugby and Soccer are in the top-5. Rugby tops the list for blood tests as all its National Programme tests are blood tests (no urine tests).

The ISC decompose the figures between tests that are conducted In-Competition and those that are conducted Out-of-Competition. The table below lists the top sports for each type of test. The team field sports of GAA, Rugby and Soccer top the list for In-Competition tests. All of the GAA and Soccer tests are conducted In-Competition. The Out-of-Competition sports might be classified as individual sports (accepting that these athletes frequently are part of an Irish team). Athletics and Cycling account for over half of all Out-of-Competition testing between them.

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Simulation & Association Football

13/11/2013

By David Butler

The issue of diving came to the fore again in last weekends Premier League when media pundits alleged that Chelsea midfielder Ramires dived to win Chelsea a penalty from referee, Andre Marriner, in the dying seconds as they trailed at home to West Brom.

Diving is perhaps a relatively new phenomenon in football and a question often arises as to who should burden the responsibility; is it a players duty not to dive or is it up to a referee to detect deception and duly punish? If we assume that it is the latter (rather than debating the morals of footballers), it is interesting to ask how referee's are trained to detect deceptive tactics and whether or not they make more accurate judgements than the rest of us.

I haven't come across any empirical articles on the suggested rise in cases of diving but previous work concerning the motor experience of observers has been explored as a causal reason why we can/cannot detect cheating. Here's the interesting study that surveys football referees, football players, wheelchair bounded football fans (who have limited motor experience) and novices and asks all the groups to judge whether a footballer dives or is actually fouled.

As expected, depending on the condition, different success rates are recorded. Referees have a 72.2% accuracy in diagnosing the difference between a dive and a foul while players score 72%. Fans come it at 61.1% in their ability to discriminate and novices could distinguish between a foul and a dive' 57.4% of the time.

So perhaps we should lay off Andre as referees appear to be better able to spot dives...(in an experimental setting)...

Fans and doping in sport

10/10/2013

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by Declan Jordan

It has often puzzled me why some sports fans remain committed to sports (and often individual sportsmen and women) when there are frequent doping scandals and doubts over the cleanliness of the sport. The doping scandals in cycling are the most obvious case and while those that feel passionately about their chosen sport(s) are often all too aware of the blind spots from which sports fans suffer, there must come a stage when the basis of the sport comes into question.

So I was interested to come across a recent paper by German economists, Berno Buechel, Eike Emrich and Stefanie Pohlkamp called "Nobody's Innocent: the role of customers in the doping dilemma". The paper explores, using a game theory model, the behaviour of sports fans (customers) in response to doping scandals. They begin with the assumption that there would be a disincentive to dope where customers/fans would withdraw support in response to a doping scandal. In fact their model suggests that this reaction from fans could lead to more doping where it leads to sports organisers conducting fewer tests.

The paper models the interaction of decisions by athletes, organisers and fans. It argues that:

We have so far established that the unique equilibrium outcome is d-n-s ( i.e. Athletes dope, Organizers do not test, and Customers stay supporters). The real world prediction of our simple model is thus that the number of dopers is large, while the probability of a doped athlete to be caught and punished is close to zero. The real extent of doping within professional sports is hard to assess and thus remains highly controversial. Theoretically, there are strong incentives to use performance-enhancing drugs. In particular, if our second prediction holds - that the probability of being detected and punished is small. The explanation that our model provides for doping is that organizers do not want to uncover the full extent of doping because they anticipate that they would suffer losses in the case of scandals.

It seems to me the paper implies the root of the problem is asymmetric information, but where supporters may not wish to discover more about doping in their sport and organisers are not incentivised to introduce a tough anti-doping regime for fear of scaring away supporters.

The paper suggests two possible solutions to avoiding the incentive structure that may lead to athletes doping based on an 'under-testing' by worried organisers. The testing could be taken over by an organisation outside of the sport, perhaps a state-run body. Although the writers don't consider it I expect this could be unworkable since most sports are multinational and countries may also have less than strong incentives to test their own athletes when other countries have less stringent testing.

Second they suggest that organisers should be forced to issue full information on activities in dope testing, releasing information on all tests and not just those that result in positive outcomes. While there may be difficulties in releasing some of this sensitive information they argue that WADA could provide a simple rating system for sports or events that provides more transparency and information for fans. They say that:

A much simpler suggestion is that the WADA [World Anti-Doping Agency] makes public to which extent sports associations and NADAs comply to their fight against doping. This could be a simple rating which gives Customers a clear signal about which disciplines and events are credible in their fight against doping. Of course, this requires independence on part of the WADA, which is also doubted (Eber, 2002; Preston and Szymanski, 2003), but, in principle, we conclude that there should be an independent rating or certifying agency that offically measures to which extent certain sports events have implemented an anti-doping regime. Whether or not doping prevails in the future is then in the hand of the Customers.

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Why hasn't Triathlon had a Major Problem with Doping?

23/9/2013

by Paul O'Sullivan

The issue of doping in sports has been in the public eye in recent years, with cycling, athletics and baseball, among others, having major doping scandals. One sport that has avoided tainting by doping is the increasingly popular triathlon. On the face of it, this may be surprising given the physical requirements of the sport, where athletes swim, cycle and run for relatively long distances and time periods, and the relatively low technical ability required, but perhaps not so for other reasons.

By assuming that an athlete’s natural state is ‘clean’, economists usually frame the decision to dope in terms of a cost-benefit analysis, with an athlete choosing to dope if the expected benefit of doping outweighs its expected cost. The benefits can include higher prize money, sponsorship and appearance fees, the emotional joy from winning, greater fame, etc. On the other hand, the costs can include the monetary and long-term health costs of doping, any fines and suspensions as a result of detection, the feeling of guilt and reputational damage from knowing that one is a cheat, etc. Doping has the characteristics of a ‘Prisoner’s Dilemma’ as each athlete may have an incentive to dope if no-one else does, but all are worse off if everyone dopes as win probabilities may be unchanged but all must incur doping costs.

Up to relatively recently, triathlon was a sport with little prize money and exposure. The last number of years, however, has seen a major increase in both participation and general interest in the sport. The ITU World Triathlon Series increased its total prize money for 2013 by over 9% to over $2.25 million (see here), while some Ironman races offer first prizes of $75,000 with the Ironman World Champion winning $650,000 (see here). TV coverage has also increased with Sky showing regular highlights of the ITU Series and Setanta covering the Ironman series. All else equal, one would expect the greater prize money and TV exposure to increase the incentive to dope.

Anti-doping regulation in triathlon is, in theory, on a par with most sports as the two main triathlon bodies, the International Triathlon Union (ITU) and the World Triathlon Corporation (WTC), have incorporated the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) ‘Code’(see here) and have also introduced the Athlete Biological Passport (ABP) scheme(see here). While a small number of triathletes have been found guilty of doping offences in the last number of years, there are still gaps in the testing mechanism (see here for a more in-depth discussion).

One of the major reasons for doping in cycling was that the cyclists and their medical teams were so far ahead of the testers that the likelihood of detection was effectively zero (see Tyler Hamilton’s ‘The Secret Race’ for many examples of this). For instance, it was many years after the introduction of EPO as a doping product before a definitive EPO test was established. The relatively high prize money for successful cyclists and their teams often facilitated substantial monetary payments from cyclists to their‘medical advisers’ and may also have encouraged the culture of ‘omerta’ in the sport. The relatively low prize money and sponsorship levels in triathlon, and the fact that it is an individual sport, may help to explain why doping has not pervaded triathlon like it did cycling.

Despite all of the above, maybe the answer to the title question is found in a previous contribution to this blog by David Butler (see here) which concluded that “Whether it is athletics, cycling or baseball the force of prohibiting third parties may be no match for the power of local social norms that are fostered and enforced within groups”. Doping may simply be so abhorrent to the triathlon community that the cost of doping simply never outweighs any possible benefit.

The Economics of Doping

7/8/2013

By David Butler

The news that baseball’s highest paid player, Alex Rodriguez, along with twelve others have been suspended over doping has once again raised the issue of drugs in sports and there effect on performance. While I’m sure the philosophy behind regulating against performance enhancing drugs is intended to ensure fairness in one pillar of competition, economists may traditionally look at the topic differently leaving the normative issues aside.

More than likely an economist would evaluate the issue of banning drugs in a game theoretic sense. What I mean by this is that regulating against doping prevents a race to the bottom between athletes, who could strive to find superior drugs if they were permissible but alas would maintain the same relative position in the ranking (all the while carrying the increased costs of risks to their health).

A sub-optimal doping arms race could transpire. In the words of the Red Queen from Lewis Carrols’ Through the Looking Glass “it takes all the running you can do, to keep in the same place”. Taking the usual microeconomic assumptions of rationality, preference stability etc, I could see how economists would recommend a third party to regulate against drug use in sport given that game theory would predict that competition between athletes would lead to a ‘failed’ outcome.

What are the economic arguments for permitting the use of drugs to improve performance in sport?

The first, I suppose, is an economic ideology; athletes should be allowed the freedom to choose and should bear the costs of that choice. Third parties need not interfere. Economists model trade-offs for all consumers using what are called indifference curves, so why not for athletes too? In this case the trade-off is between improved performance and (to indulge in the jargon of the economist) an ‘economic bad’ of increased health risks. For improved performance, one must take on more risk and vice versa.

A second reason may be to admit that all competitions are inherently unfair; the rules of the game, no matter how they are organised, will naturally confer a greater advantage on one party over another. Improved training methods and infrastructure may be available to some simply as they are luckily enough to have a particular nationality. By allowing drugs to be used it could counter intuitively ensure a fairer contest by allowing equal access to enhancements.

Thinking about the economics off doping and policy measures designed to prevent it does however carry with it a range of explicit and implicit psychological assumptions that are highly restrictive but allow economists model behaviours in a simplified manner, facilitatating formal predictions. To solve the doping problem, if it is a problem at all, economists may need to look beyond these tools. The works of Nobel laureate Elinor Ostrom would be a good place to start as sports, like the bulk of Ostrom's works, are about communities. Whether it is athletics, cycling or baseball the force of prohibiting third parties may be no match for the power of local social norms that are fostered and enforced within groups. Saying this and achieving this are however two different matters.

Doping in Sport: Man Vs Horse

Gaming it: Incentives, Cheating and the Grey Area in Sport

Anti-Doping Test Figures

Simulation & Association Football

Fans and doping in sport

Why hasn't Triathlon had a Major Problem with Doping?

The Economics of Doping

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