The social and psychological cost of staying drug-free in sports

Penny Oleksiak is one of Canada's most successful swimmers and Olympians (although that was before Summer Mackintosh became the new It Girl). As it happens she lives just up the road from me, here in the east end of Toronto. She is still on the Canadian national swim team, but, in the run-up to the next Olympics (July 2028 in Los Angeles, providing California is still part of the USA - and the USA is still part of the world - by then), she has blotted her copybook big time.

She's not a cheater and she's not a maverick, but she is nevertheless deemed to have violated the rules of the International Testing Agency, and has had to declare a voluntary provisional suspension of her ambitions while the matter is investigated, In the process, her case has opened up to the public some of the lesser known rules around doping that top athletes and sports people have to adhere to in order to be taken seriously at the top levels. 

See, Ms. Oleksiak is in violation of the "whereabouts" rules. It turns out that in order to get a clean bill of health from the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) for World Championships, Olympics, and other major international competitions, competitors need to log in using the ADAMS (Anti-Doping Administration and Management System) online system. 

Athletes are required to report an accurate and up to date record of their whereabouts at all times.  Every day. This is so that they can be drug tested at any time with no notice. "Late, inaccurate or incomplete whereabouts" constitutes a Filing Failure, and three such failures in any one year results in a WADA failure, which can mean an athlete is banned from competitions even if they have never ever taken a banned substance.

This is the position Ms. Oleksiak now finds herself in. She is branded as just as bad as the worst of the Russian serial offenders, even though she swears she has never ever taken any banned substance, but is merely caught up in this administrative snafu.

It makes you realize just how much privacy and autonomy top athletes have to sacrifice in order to pursue their sporting dreams. Penny hasn't commented publicly, other than a short, now-deleted Instagram post. But, as other athletes note, they go in to this system eyes open, and it is essentially just a cost of doing business at these rarefied heights. But what an imposition!