It’s been almost 15 years now since the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) introduced the Athlete Biological Passport (ABP) to bolster its fight against doping. By monitoring athletes’ biological variables over time, the passport seeks to indirectly detect the effects of doping (rather than detecting doping substances or methods directly).
The program has proven successful. As well as acting as a significant deterrent to would-be dopers, the ABP has also uncovered more than 180 cases of apparent doping since its inception, with cycling’s Robert Stannard among the most recent to be implicated.
But elite cycling – and indeed sport more generally – has evolved in the years since the biological passport was introduced. Those who opt to cheat nowadays aren’t doing so in the same ways they were in the 2000s. They aren’t injecting themselves with large doses of EPO, or having blood transfusions in their team buses after Tour de France stages.
The ABP, too, has evolved over the years. Laboratory techniques have improved significantly, for starters, and the range of banned substances the program checks for has expanded. More specifically: the program launched in 2009 with a “Haematological Module” – which looked for markers of blood doping (EPO, blood transfusions etc.) – but in 2014 it expanded with a “Steroidal Module” which tests for markers of steroid doping in athletes’ urine.
But while it has improved, the ABP does still have its issues. Like the fact it struggles to detect EPO microdosing, or the fact an athlete who drinks large volumes of water can jeopardise the program’s accuracy. And at a time when decades-old, pharmaceutically enhanced climbing records are being broken – causing many to question the legitimacy of recent world-beating performances – it’s arguably more important than ever for anti-doping efforts to continue evolving, to protect the integrity of the sport.
One possible way to do that is by adding power data to the biological passport.
Why add power?
In the years since the ABP was introduced, power data has become near-ubiquitous in road cycling. Where power meters were once only the domain of the elite and/or the wealthy, such devices are now built into more bikes than ever, and cheaper than ever to purchase aftermarket. By the time most riders turn professional, they’ve already got years of power data under their belt with those numbers telling the story of their growth and progression.
It’s this wealth of longitudinal data that, some argue, can be used to bolster the biological passport program. The benefits are relatively clear: adding longitudinal power data to the passport program would offer another way of detecting spikes in performance when biological markers aren’t able to. For example, if a rider doped in preparation for an event, stopped doping before the event, but then went on to perform above expectations, power data might show spikes that biological testing might not. That athlete could then be subjected to further, targeted testing. Similarly for athletes using doping practices that can’t be detected through biological sampling at all.
The idea of adding power data to the ABP isn’t new – it’s been discussed in academic literature for many years now. But a new research paper in this space seeks to move the discussion along, by consulting with a panel of experts to come up with a proposed implementation plan.
Ask the experts
Of the 15 experts consulted for this latest paper:
- two were sports scientists, with “expertise in power profiling and anti-doping applied to road cycling,” and with “relevant scientific publications during the last decade”
- three had a current coaching position in a WorldTour team
- 10 fell into both camps
While the paper doesn’t list all 15 experts consulted, the list of the study’s authors does give us a few names. And there are some big-hitters in there:
- Frédéric Grappe, head of performance at Groupama-FDJ
- Xabier Artetxe, head coach at Ineos Grenadiers
- Dajo Sanders, another coach at Ineos Grenadiers
- Aitor Viribay, lead nutritionist at Ineos Grenadiers
- Marco Pinotti, ex-WorldTour pro and now coach at Jayco AlUla
- Teun van Erp, sports scientist at Tudor Pro Cycling
- Manuel Mateo-March, high performance and junior road manager at the Spanish Cycling Federation
For this latest paper, the 15 experts were asked for their responses to three specific questions:
- Do you believe that longitudinal monitoring of power outputs through the use of power meters could assist in doping risk assessment and be used as an additional measure for anti-doping needs?
- If you think it would be useful, how would you implement it? If not, why don’t you see it as viable or interesting?
- If you answered “yes” to the first question and have proposed a plan for its implementation, what main limitations and difficulties do you think such a plan would encounter?’’
As you might expect, two main schools of thought emerged once the researchers collated all the answers. The first: that power output data shouldn’t be considered as a viable option for bolstering anti-doping efforts, given a handful of major challenges. The second: that power data should be considered, assuming those major challenges can be overcome.
Which of course prompts the question: what are those major challenges? Why wouldn’t power data be an easy way to help stop cheats?
Challenges to overcome
A number of concerns were revealed when the experts were asked to explain their concerns with the proposal.
Challenge #1: Precision, reliability, and validity
The most often-mentioned concern related to the precision of current power meters and errors that can occur through poor calibration. “In my experience power meters are too unreliable to perform at the level required here,” wrote one expert. Another added that “During my coaching career I have seen variations of 30 watts without any good reason.”
Newly crowned world champion Tadej Pogačar highlighted exactly this concern in a recent interview. “Power meters are not so reliable these days,” he said on the Peter Attia Drive Podcast. “We have a Shimano power meter but you always need to be careful with the temperatures outside, the calibration, everything. Sometimes it can be off. You need to be careful about this.”
For power data to be a useful addition to the biological passport program more work would need to be done to “test intrasubject and intersubject variability across races and competitive seasons” so that these variations could be factored in to avoid unfairly penalising any riders. That is: it’s not just that different power meters from different brands report different power outputs with varying margins of error; individual power meters themselves are subject to variation within their own readings from time to time. Plus: riders who change teams might move from one power meter system to another, compromising the accuracy of longitudinal data.
Challenge #2: Consistency
Related to the above: if consistent, accurate, and reliable monitoring of power data is going to happen peloton-wide, one specific device would need to be used by the entire peloton. At present, different teams have sponsorship arrangements with a raft of different power meter manufacturers*.
While moving to a system with only one standardised power meter across the board would benefit the one brand chosen, it’s hardly likely to be supported by those who miss out on that contract. Or as one expert put it: “I don’t think we can bankrupt 20 power meter manufacturers and four teams to implement an anti-doping method right now.” While there’s plenty of hyperbole in that last quote, it’s true that if this proposal is going to work, it’ll likely need to include a way to placate the industry.
(*In the men’s WorldTour 12 teams use Shimano power meters, four use SRAM (Quarq), and one each use SRM and Power2Max. In the women’s peloton six use Shimano, another six use SRAM (Quarq), two use Power2Max, and one uses Garmin Rally pedals.)
Challenge #3: Typical variations in performance
As the authors of the research paper write, there’s still a “relative lack of knowledge of the normal seasonal variations in power output. These ranges must be established before we can attempt to determine what constitutes ‘abnormal’ variations.” Putting it more simply, as one expert did: “First we would have to know what is doped power vs clean power.”
Important context: a recent study of professional male riders’ power outputs found between-season variations of up to 12% for short efforts (less than a minute) and up to 8% for longer efforts (longer than one minute). The experts seem to feel that there’s a very real risk of riders being accused of abnormal performances when, in reality, their performances might just be part of natural variations from season to season. Not to mention that even an entirely clean breakthrough performance will almost always correlate with the rider achieving an increase in watts produced and/or their power-to-weight ratio.
Challenge #4: External factors
While power data is the best performance metric cycling has, it too has its intrinsic problems. Many factors can influence a rider’s power output during a given effort – altitude, temperature, humidity, and gradient, to name just a few. “Experts highlighted that up until now, scientific evidence regarding the real influence of each of these factors has been scarcely studied and has not been precisely quantified,” the authors write. In order for power data to be applied to anti-doping efforts in an accurate and fair way, these factors all need to be accounted for.
Challenge #5: Internal factors
Just as external factors can influence a rider’s output on a given day, so too can internal factors. Fatigue, nutrition, the impact of legal drugs, injuries – these are just some of the physical factors that can have an impact. There are psychological factors to consider too: a rider’s motivation, how they respond to team dynamics, their mood in general. Ideally, all of these should be factored in, the experts suggest, if the proposal is going to work as planned.
A proposal to reshape anti-doping
So where do these challenges leave us? Well according to the paper’s authors: “All experts agreed that power data should only be used as a complimentary [sic] factor for aiding targeting of riders for follow-up biological testing via the ABP or direct doping tests for specific substances.” Or, to put it another way, power data – and any anomalies it uncovers – should only be one part of the equation. It should be used to help inform which riders should be further investigated for possible cheating, rather than being intrinsic proof of any wrongdoing.
Based on that view, and based on the responses of the experts, the study’s authors propose the following implementation plan. They describe it as a “general framework upon which efforts should be directed in future years.”
- To avoid the variability in the data created by different power meters “the responsible authority, teams, staff, and riders should preferably agree upon the implementation of the same model of power measuring device, at least in the professional categories and preferably also in the development ranks.” Alternatively, each rider could keep their existing power meter – so as not to “negatively [affect] commercial and sponsorship responsibilities” – and instead install a secondary, standardised power meter.
- The longitudinal tracking of a rider’s training and racing power data should start before they enter the pro peloton. This data “would be used to detect abnormal intraseasonal and interseasonal variations in performance, along with changes in body mass.” Data from all riders in the same race at the same time would be used to compare individual performances against the rest of the peloton.
- All power data sourced from training and racing “would be integrated into a private and secure database administered by the antidoping governing bodies.”
- An independent, expert panel would determine which performances could be seen as abnormal, taking into account the external and internal factors mentioned above. Riders putting in abnormal performances “would enter the pool of targeted biological testing together with those showing unexpected ABP readings and illogical race results.”
While it’s not mentioned by the authors in their paper, there’s another possible clause that could be worth adding to the above proposal. Perhaps the standardised power meter that each rider is supplied with is tamper-proof, with all power data automatically uploaded to whichever authority is responsible for the program. This would stop riders and teams from even seeing what data is captured, let alone tampering with it in any way.
Where to from here?
It’s not unusual for researchers to tackle a perceived problem in a given field and ponder the possible solutions. Usually these musings don’t go further than the academic sphere and, regardless of how logical or feasible the proposals, they rarely change much in the real world. Will it be any different in this case? Does this proposal have a realistic chance of being further developed, or maybe even implemented one day?
If it does, it won’t be because the study authors have pushed for it.
“At this time, neither I nor any of the co-authors are in contact with WADA, the UCI, or other relevant organisations to advocate for the formal implementation of this proposal,” lead author Sebastian Sitko told Escape via email. “While we found the theoretical exploration of power data in anti-doping to be intriguing, no active steps have been taken to push for its real-world application.”
Escape reached out to both WADA and the UCI for this article, asking:
- whether these organisations were aware of the research paper and the proposal contained within
- how they viewed the proposal
- what would need to happen for this proposal to be adopted by WADA and the UCI
Neither organisation responded to multiple requests for comment prior to publication.
At first glance, the proposal seems a logical one – why not bolster anti-doping efforts with data that’s already being created and captured every day? But as the list of challenges above highlights, implementing such a system would be far from trivial. And with so many questions about the accuracy and reliability of the data that power meters currently capture, those who do decide to cheat are likely to have some level of plausible deniability, potentially rendering the whole exercise pointless.
From Sitko’s perspective, it’s “currently improbable” that WADA or the UCI would want to incorporate power data into their anti-doping efforts “in an official capacity.”
“There are significant obstacles to overcome, particularly the inherent variability in power meter readings, conflicts of interest between teams and power meter manufacturers, and the logistical challenges of standardising a single device across all athletes,” Sitko said. “Additionally, the fact that power data is self-recorded and can be manipulated or withheld further complicates its potential as a reliable anti-doping tool at this stage.”
And yet, Sitko believes that the proposal shouldn’t be ruled out completely.
“We do believe this concept holds significant potential,” he said. “With time and effort to address some of the most pressing challenges – such as standardisation and data integrity – this approach could feasibly be implemented in the mid-term future.”
Which leaves us with one last question: if this is a good idea, and it is feasible, who’s going to be the one to push for it?
Ronan Mc Laughlin provided additional reporting and context for this article.
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