In February of last year, CHINADA, the Chinese anti-doping agency, announced that it was suspending doping controls because of the restrictions imposed by the novel coronavirus - six months before the planned Olympic Games.

The outrage was great.

Hardly anyone saw that life in Europe would be slowed down just weeks later, that the Olympic Games would be postponed, that significantly more people would soon fall ill and die in Europe and the United States than in China.

Now there are doubts again whether the Olympic Games can take place. Some athletes are also unhappy with the requirements. Three months ago, the shot-putter Christina Schwanitz pleaded for another postponement of the games, not primarily because of health protection, but to ensure equal opportunities. There is widespread concern that athletes could use the sparse doping controls to take prohibited substances in post-training.

How much or how little was and is actually being tested?

There are reliable numbers for the beginning of the pandemic, because then you could count the tests: The fight against the dopers paused.

The human rights organization Council Of Europe has determined this for its 47 member states (and curiously also for Australia).

How the national anti-doping organizations worked, however, differed greatly.

In the absence of competition, almost half of the planned tests were canceled.

"It continued at a high level"

For a successful anti-doping strategy, however, the training tests are at least as important as the competition tests. From the beginning of March until the end of the data collection on May 4 of last year, 31 countries did not test at all, including Germany. The National Anti Doping Agency Germany (NADA) and the companies commissioned by it even paused until May 16. In contrast, tests were carried out in 17 other countries, such as France, Denmark, Norway and Switzerland, albeit to a lesser extent in some cases.

Last week, NADA looked back with satisfaction on 2020 at its digital annual press conference. "Thanks to the rapid development of new communication strategies, the anti-doping work continued at a high level, despite lockdowns and the associated restrictions in many areas of public life," said CEO Andrea Gotzmann.

From the summer of 2020 onwards, NADA again tested a relatively large number of tests; 9572 controls were carried out throughout the year, just under a quarter fewer than in the previous year. However, significantly fewer samples were taken during these controls, a good third is missing compared to the previous year's level. Worldwide, only 578 samples were taken in March 2020. In March 2019 there were 26,933, this March the inspectors came back to 22,649, although many competitions were still canceled. The World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) published the comparison at the beginning of May. The meshes of the test networks were therefore very wide from February to September 2020. A total of 168, 256 blood and urine samples were taken throughout the year. That is a decrease of 45 percent compared to the previous year.

Nevertheless, Andrea Gotzmann answers optimistically to questions about equal opportunities at the upcoming major events, in addition to the Olympic Games, the final round of the European Football Championship, the European Football Union is responsible for the doping controls there. “I believe all organizations are running the pre-Olympic testing program at a high level,” she says. However, the pandemic is progressing in waves and differently across the globe. Differences in the tests are therefore conceivable.

The fact that NADA 2020 was able to test a lot (with significantly higher effort) is also due to the secure financing. Since January 1st, NADA has received institutional funding; The federal government contributed a good two thirds to the total budget. Under the conditions, the controls were appropriate, says NADA board member Lars Mortsiefer. Nevertheless, there is likely to be a great deal of distrust in Tokyo. The multitude of world and European records in athletics last year made people sit up and take notice. David Storl, twice world champion and three times European champion in the shot put, named the quarantine as a Covid contact person as a possible loophole.

He told the newspaper Die Welt that a doping control officer had to turn around at his door because Storl was not allowed to let him in - officially ordered. NADA then announced that only around a dozen quarantine cases had been documented in 2020, which corresponds to 0.13 percent of all controls. In 2021, however, the dozen was already reached in the first quarter. All these cases would be documented, followed up and the documents of the official order would be requested and checked, according to NADA.

The test level is therefore almost back to the pre-pandemic level. You will have to wait for the numbers of the decisive test phase, namely for the six months before the games. “It is of course necessary to check whether the athletes qualified for the Olympic and Paralympic Games were subject to an adequate test program,” says NADA. "Since these pre-Olympic test programs started again at the beginning of the year, no statement can be made yet." Since the samples from these games are also frozen for later analysis, the results may once again only be provisional.