I don’t think anyone will argue that doping is good for our sport, or any sport. To me the question is how much money and effort should be diverted from our mission to address this endeavor.
When masters swimmers break national or world records, require drug testing in order for those records to count & stand.Testing everyone who sets a national record would require drug testing in place at every sanctioned or recognized event, since national records can be set at any of these. I believe this would be cost prohibitive, at least for most event hosts. I run a small meet and I know there is no way I could pay thousands to handle drug testing and I doubt my participants would want to spend an extra $20-$40 in entry fees to cover this expense.
Does anyone know the particulars of this program?Apparently the answer form this forum is no. But even if someone did, it would be comparing apples to oranges. T&F Masters is under USATF, while USMS is an independent organization. USATF is a USOC member and USADA signatory, USMS is neither. For USMS to have a similar program we would need to disband and be absorbed into USA Swimming.
There has been a suggestion of random testing at Nationals, which on the surface might work. The issues I see are that any competent drug cheats will have flushed their system prior to the event so the only people caught will be those on prescribed medicines and those who don’t know what’s in the supplements they take. The other issue is that there would be huge expenses with setting up a doping control infrastructure; since we are not under WADA/USADA and FINA doesn’t support testing Masters Swimmers we would be on the hook for what could be hundreds of thousands of dollars. I’d guess WADA/USADA have spent millions of not billions so far.
It seems like the simplest most cost effective solution is to remove the incentive to cheat. If Masters would just stop keeping records and Top 10’s, then the cheaters would have 1 less reason to cheat and everyone who is offended by cheaters taking records away from clean athletes wouldn’t need to worry. WIN – WIN.
I don’t think anyone will argue that doping is good for our sport, or any sport. To me the question is how much money and effort should be diverted from our mission to address this endeavor.
When masters swimmers break national or world records, require drug testing in order for those records to count & stand.Testing everyone who sets a national record would require drug testing in place at every sanctioned or recognized event, since national records can be set at any of these. I believe this would be cost prohibitive, at least for most event hosts. I run a small meet and I know there is no way I could pay thousands to handle drug testing and I doubt my participants would want to spend an extra $20-$40 in entry fees to cover this expense.
Does anyone know the particulars of this program?Apparently the answer form this forum is no. But even if someone did, it would be comparing apples to oranges. T&F Masters is under USATF, while USMS is an independent organization. USATF is a USOC member and USADA signatory, USMS is neither. For USMS to have a similar program we would need to disband and be absorbed into USA Swimming.
There has been a suggestion of random testing at Nationals, which on the surface might work. The issues I see are that any competent drug cheats will have flushed their system prior to the event so the only people caught will be those on prescribed medicines and those who don’t know what’s in the supplements they take. The other issue is that there would be huge expenses with setting up a doping control infrastructure; since we are not under WADA/USADA and FINA doesn’t support testing Masters Swimmers we would be on the hook for what could be hundreds of thousands of dollars. I’d guess WADA/USADA have spent millions of not billions so far.
It seems like the simplest most cost effective solution is to remove the incentive to cheat. If Masters would just stop keeping records and Top 10’s, then the cheaters would have 1 less reason to cheat and everyone who is offended by cheaters taking records away from clean athletes wouldn’t need to worry. WIN – WIN.
