What do you hear when a fighter says, ‘Oh, I've done 80 tests and I’ve never tested positive before?’
Look at Lance Armstrong. What does that tell you? He did god knows how many tests, they didn’t get him until way down the line, and in fact his was a very interesting thing.
Do you think that, seeing as you mentioned that name, boxing has a Lance Armstrong?
Oh, I'm sure, I’m sure.
When you say that, do you think retroactively we’re going to go back and get someone or do you think that there’s just going to be a massive name to pop and it’s going to be huge?
No, I think that a lot of fighters aren’t tested at all, so could there be people like that out there? Of course. Could there be people that have tested through our program not tested adverse? Certainly, for various reasons, it could be micro-dosing, could be when they stopped something, they were educated on when to stop it, could it be that it’s substances that we can't detect… so it could be any of the above.
Some of the excuses that you hear, and I just want to clarify this, I’m not asking you about any individual cases, are there excuses you hear and you’re like, ‘Well, that’s just nonsense, that’s not even scientifically true,’ but you just hear these excuses?
Well, I don’t think that I’m in a position where I should say the etiology of something is or is not, I don’t think that’s my role to really respond to that one. I mean, it’s probably true, but I try not to look at it in that respect.
I did ask you the other day if you’ve had more than 100 positives and you obviously said yes, do you know how many you’ve got, do you have a running total?
I don't keep a running total. We look on a yearly basis and I would say that about four per cent of the tests that we do, which seems like a very small amount to me, that are adverse, so I think that I should look at the statistics for WADA, but I think we’re much higher than them. We used to be about four times higher than them, I don’t know if that’s true or not, but still that seems like a very small amount.
It does, especially when you hear this thing, 70 per cent of fighters are on stuff and 80 per cent are and all the rest of it, like four per cent doesn’t quite show that, but then there’s all the different grey areas, right? Out of competition, in competition and like you said, people who don’t have dates announced and aren’t being tested in between and different stuff. There’s so many different things, just the positives aren’t being registered, doesn’t mean people, doesn’t mean 96 per cent of the fighters are clean.
That’s true and one thing that you didn’t mention is the WADA-accredited labs have thresholds for certain substances, so something could be under the threshold but still be there, that’s a prohibited substance, but according to the regulations that are international, as far as what a lab can report as adverse or not, it may fall under that, so that’s important too.
There's a lot of people who obviously after an A sample comes back, we hear B sample this, B sample that. How many times has the B sample been different?
We’ve never had that, where the B sample was different.
That would be thousands of tests, right?
Yeah, well maybe not thousands, but through WADA, I would say hundreds; several hundred tests that have had an adverse finding and the B sample has been different, I don’t think I’ve ever seen that.
Could you entertain me with a rough idea of how many positives VADA’s had, how many adverse findings you've had, do you know?
I don’t keep track of that or our organization doesn’t keep track of that… One thing that’s always bothered me is, I can’t remember if it’s maybe it’s the way the UFC posts their results, they post who was tested and how many times, but to me if you’re going to post that, and we don’t do that – so you could still say maybe we should do that – but irrespective of that, they post all these athletes that have tested a certain number of times, but there’s no indication of whether or not those athletes tested positive or not, or had adverse results or atypical results. It’s the same thing with USADA, it’s the way they handle it as well.
From the more than 100 people that you’ve detected adverse findings for, how many of them turn around to you and said, ‘Okay, I’ll hold my hands up. You got me, I’ve been taking stuff.’ How many have admitted it?
I would say maybe 5 per cent, in the sense that, ‘Yes, this was in my system, I didn't know I shouldn’t take this,’ or they admit in that sense. One thing that you didn’t mention is as far as a lab result, something be under the threshold of detection. That’s always an issue, and I’ve talked to an organization like Oliver Catlin's organization, Banned Substance Control Group, ‘are the thresholds too stringent?’ In other words, maybe people are unnecessarily being accused of doping with small amounts, and maybe the thresholds by the laboratories need to be changed because their ability to detect something is so strong that maybe that’s not fair. And I don’t have the answer to that because I’m not an anti-doping scientist, but
There’s a new film out, called The Cut with Orlando Bloom, have you heard about this?
Yes, I haven't seen that, but someone sent me that clip where they mentioned VADA, and they talk about the person working with the fighter, I don’t know if it was a manager or whoever it was.
They bring in this guru, one of these guys, I think he like gives him [the fighter] diuretics, and then he gives him like a stimulant so he can train when he’s running on empty, and he’s got this portfolio of tricks up his sleeve – but it shows, it’s kind of worrying, but it shows the role of this guy on the peripheries is there, and also the fact that the drug taking stuff in boxing is being normalized to the point that it’s now in pop culture.
That’s so sad, isn’t it? It really is. I mean, it is. I’m sure it’s always been there to some degree. I mean, you can look historically, going back centuries, as far as people abusing performance enhancing agents, but it is kind of sad.
I still think that it is more normalized in boxing than it should be, mainly because of the risks to the fighters, and that bothers me. It worries me because you and I both know, especially from your amazing book Damage, about what can happen to a fighter, what can happen to their brain, and I think use of performance-enhancing drugs in any respect can make that more possible by somebody not feeling pain, training too hard, doing too much in the gym, taking too much punishment, that becomes additive, and it worries me, and it’s sad, I think.
Because in boxing, people would take PEDs for a number of reasons as well. It’s kind of more so than any other sport, in the sense that people do want strength and size, maybe if they’re moving up through the weights, people also want the engine, which is what the cyclists would use. Then there’s like the mindset stimulation, where someone wants to feel a certain type of aggression, maybe before a fight or training session, and then there’s the diuretics or losing weight. It’s a lot of stuff, isn’t it? Whereas other sports, you might have the losing weight aspect, or you might have the engine aspect, but boxing is a melting pot, where people kind of could do with all of them.
No, that's true, and when you compare it to other endeavors, where there isn’t that kind of punishment, like golf, I mean, do I think that performance enhancing drugs are prevalent in golf? I think just as much in boxing, but golfers, unless a ball goes the wrong place, they’re not getting hit in the head. But I do think tennis, etc. I mean, I think it’s prevalent in all sports.
The third and final part of the interview with Dr Margaret Goodman will be published tomorrow (December 31). Read Part I here: 'The baddies always win when it comes to PEDs'
