The struggle to ensure that sports are clean has intensified over the last decade. The anti-doping community has notched major victories, with the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency finally bringing down cycling superstar Lance Armstrong in 2012 and the World Anti-Doping Agency (with the help of Bryan Fogel’s documentary Icarus) breaking open Russia’s state-sponsored doping program just months before the Rio 2016 Olympic Games. (A recent admission of falsifying data by Yuri Ganus, the director general of the Russian anti-doping agency, may well affect his country’s return to competition.) And late last month, the USADA levied a four-year ban on famed Nike Oregon Project coach Alberto Salazar. Less than two weeks later, Nike shuttered the Oregon Project.
But the anti-doping community typically lacks sufficient financial resources to completely get the upperhand in the endless cat-and-mouse game. WADA funding from the Olympic Movement and the world’s governments totalled just $35 million in 2019. The USADA’s annual report for 2018 indicated it had less than $9 million available to cover its expenditures for the following year. Those are tiny amounts when considering that the global sports industry is estimated to be worth some $70 billion. To put a fine point on it: the industry is spending less than 0.1% of its wealth to ensure that competition is clean.
SportTechie recently spoke to USADA CEO Travis Tygart and chief science officer Matt Fedoruk about the state of anti-doping.