Doping at the Olympics: There are big gaps in the control system

More than a third of the participants in the Winter Olympics were not tested for doping or were tested less frequently than recommended in preparation for the competition. This emerges from statistics presented on Thursday by the International Testing Authority (ITA), which is responsible for the anti-doping program. ITA General Director Benjamin Cohen said that these were the best numbers ever at the Olympic Games. In fact, only 63 percent of the approximately 3,000 athletes who took part were subjected to doping controls to the desired extent.

29 percent were tested at least once but less often than recommended, and eight percent not at all. These statistics include the collection of tests since August, which have been collected either by the national anti-doping agencies or the international professional associations; according to the ITA, the details of the numbers can also change.

There are significant differences between different countries and sports. What is particularly striking is that some of the best winter sports nations have very poor values. In the Norwegian team, for example, which clearly took first place in the medal table at the last Olympic Winter Games in Beijing with 16 gold medals and 37 podium places and could achieve this result again in Milan, 13 percent of the athletes were not tested once and 20 percent were not tested sufficiently. In the French team, just 35 percent were checked to the recommended extent, and in the Swedish team only 30 percent. Other delegations such as Germany (96), the USA (95) or the neutral athletes from Russia and Belarus (100) do much better.

15 percent of cross-country skiers have not been tested at all

How many tests are recommended varies from sport to sport. These are divided into different risk classes by the anti-doping authorities. It is all the more astonishing how rarely the starters in some particularly risky sports were asked to undergo checks. For example, 15 percent of cross-country skiers were not tested at all, and 28 percent were not tested sufficiently. The front runner in terms of non-tests is the alpine skiing sector with 30 percent of completely untested athletes. ITA director Cohen stated that there could be various reasons why an athlete was not tested at all: late qualification or short-term nomination for the Games, an injury, but also the control resources in the country of origin.

The poor values ​​for the top nations Norway and Sweden are made even worse by the results of an anonymous survey that four media outlets recently carried out together in the Scandinavian countries. Accordingly, almost 50 percent of the athletes from the Olympic squads of Norway, Sweden, Denmark and Finland stated that they had not been tested at all during training between September 1st, 2024 and September 1st, 2025. The ITA did not want to comment on these figures because it did not know how exactly they were arrived at. The President of the World Anti-Doping Agency, Witold Banka, said: “If the numbers are correct, this is very worrying for WADA.”

The testing system of the global anti-doping bodies is generally considered to be fragile and partially effective. Based on the experience of doping history, many substances cannot be detected anyway, and unknown athletes are more likely to be caught as manipulators than top athletes. It is also important when the tests are scheduled, because manipulation often does not take place during or immediately before the competition itself, but in the weeks and months beforehand. Nevertheless, the very existence of tests can at least partially have a deterrent character – and it raises doubts about the integrity of the competitions when so many athletes have not been tested or have not been tested sufficiently. Around 3,000 doping samples will be taken during the games themselves, which is an average of one per athlete. The samples are stored for ten years.