The doping test during the pandemic: "Lower than we wanted"

It has been warned during the corona pandemic that the situation may attract active doping as restrictions on travel and personal contact make anti-doping work much more difficult. What the facts look like with the same period last year, the anti-doping authority does not want to tell.

- We have no figures and we do not want to go with that either, but we have obviously reduced the number of controls, says Jenny Schulze, group leader at the control unit at Swedish anti-doping, to SVT Sport.

When you do not want to go out with the number of tests performed, is it because it is so low that it could be interpreted as if it is free to dope?

"It's lower than we wanted, but we don't want to go out with it because we don't want to reveal to anyone how we put it up," Schulze explains.

How does testing work because there are so strict rules about close contact and personal meetings?

- We have special corona testing rules that are largely about social distance. When testing with blood tests you get closer than two meters and then we have mouth protection.

Can you take blood tests?

- Yes, we consider it if you have a mouthguard and it goes pretty quickly. Then it also has active mouthguard.

How is travel done because you do not have to move between different places?

- We have officials in most places. The ones we want to test we can test. We hope it will be a boost when it opens up again.

Sebastian Coe, chairman of the International Athletics Federation, does not think the problem is as big as one might think.

- It's something we have to keep track of. It is clear that testing has become more difficult. But no one should think that it is not tested at all because it does. It's more challenging than usual and everyone accepts it, Coe has told Deutsche Welle.