Should USMS require record breakers to do drug testing? ...

Very well put, John. "It's just Masters" doesn't mean it's not important to us, it just means we don't freak out about it. Drugs and drug tests are forms of freaking out.

For those that take umbrage at the 'just' in the phrase 'just Masters', understand that 'just' is also applied to age group swimming, summer swimming etc., as opposed to the 'open' division. After all, what we are doing could well be characterised as 'age group'. Salute anyone who participates, no matter what their background, in masters swimming for resisting the non-active snares of modern society that result in ill health, obesity and general disengagement. Whatever your motivation for swimming is, it is uniquely you and would be sullied by the use of PED's to garner acclaim from others. Testing would be validating the importance of that acclaim; those that pollute their bodies for such hollow motivation will likely reap what they sow. My homily for the day.

I agree with John. While I believe Paul's world records are important to him, I don't think he would take PEDs and risk getting (even more) proportionately small testicles for "just" a masters record. :wiggle: Testing masters, in my opinion would be a waste, not because it doesn't happen, but because most don't care (I would like to see both Smith's undergo volunteer chromosomal testing to see if they truly have 46 chromosomes because their speed is not human).

No. Masters Swimming is for people to swim according to the rules of swimming. It's a stretch to call doping regulations the rules of swimming. They define not how we swim, but who is allowed to swim. Basically, they discriminate against a certain class of people. In professional swimming, we probably want to discriminate against dopers, because so much is at stake. In Masters, I would much prefer to allow anyone to swim. If they are on steroids and they beat me, good for them. This is pure semantics. Cheaters are a class of people, too (the same class as dopers IMO). Is insisting that they touch with two hands or don't false-start discrimination? I am pretty sure that using PEDs is against the rules of USMS but that we simply don't test for it, but I don't have time to look it up right now (wife is calling). We do swim according to FINA rules, after all.

This is pure semantics. Cheaters are a class of people, too (the same class as dopers IMO). Is insisting that they touch with two hands or don't false-start discrimination? I am pretty sure that using PEDs is against the rules of USMS but that we simply don't test for it, but I don't have time to look it up right now (wife is calling). We do swim according to FINA rules, after all. Chris, It comes down to relative level of effort (and even more importantly cost). How much effort and cost is it for a judge to see if someone swims a stroke per established rules? True you have to GET the judge to the meet but hopefully you know what I mean. Now, how much effort and cost is it to gather samples from each swimmer, collate, store and handle these samples properly, transport, test, verify and report back. A lot. And this effort is something that absolutely positively needs to be done in national and international swimming. Where doping can give advantages that can have huge payoffs. But, for Masters? Where's the payoff? There might be some payoff available but in a very secondary way and orders of magnitude lower than at the Olympic level. Does this mean we should encourage doping in Masters? No but economics does play a part here. It is currently way too expensive to even consider a testing program in Masters. And even the advent of much cheaper tests will still not help with the other financial areas of impact such as logistics and personnel.

Most people that make USMS what it is are volunteers. If anyone thinks USMS should drug test, make a proposal to USMS at the convention in September. You can take the credit, but be prepared to take charge and fully execute. Oh, and you get a budget of $0.00. Just like the rest of us!

If anyone truly wanted to take it seriously, they'd step up and swim USA swimming where the competition is real. Just returned home from Zones at the Woodlands. I wish someone would tell Larry Wood that the competition in Masters isn't real.

It comes down to relative level of effort (and even more importantly cost). How much effort and cost is it for a judge to see if someone swims a stroke per established rules? True you have to GET the judge to the meet but hopefully you know what I mean. Now, how much effort and cost is it to gather samples from each swimmer, collate, store and handle these samples properly, transport, test, verify and report back. A lot. And this effort is something that absolutely positively needs to be done in national and international swimming. Where doping can give advantages that can have huge payoffs. But, for Masters? Where's the payoff? There might be some payoff available but in a very secondary way and orders of magnitude lower than at the Olympic level. Does this mean we should encourage doping in Masters? No but economics does play a part here. It is currently way too expensive to even consider a testing program in Masters. And even the advent of much cheaper tests will still not help with the other financial areas of impact such as logistics and personnel. I agree with most of this, which is why I originally said the tests SHOULD be done but the logistics is too difficult. But if there were a rapid, easy and cheap method to test for the most likely PEDs then most of the logistic difficulties disappear. Think about something like the advent of home pregnancy tests (spawn of one of my favorite ads of any kind: "the most advanced technology you'll eve pee on") compared to 30 years ago when you had to go to a clinic to be tested.

I hate cheating on ANY level and Chris you have articulated this discussion very well to that point. Its sad to me that we live in a world where we simply say "hey its expensive so let people cheat". At some point in our society I hope we can turn things in the direction simply not accepting/rationalizing when people lie, cheat & steal....regardless if its in masters swimming, politics, schools and personal relationships. Yeah...I'm a dreamer.

I agree with most of this, which is why I originally said the tests SHOULD be done but the logistics is too difficult. But if there were a rapid, easy and cheap method to test for the most likely PEDs then most of the logistic difficulties disappear. Think about something like the advent of home pregnancy tests (spawn of one of my favorite ads of any kind: "the most advanced technology you'll eve pee on") compared to 30 years ago when you had to go to a clinic to be tested. I understand your position. I'm not trying to paint you as 100% in favor of testing. But you only ever get 2 of the three out of fast, accurate and cheap. And most of those home pregnancy tests have a laboratory accuracy of 99%. And the accuracy rate is somewhat lower under real conditions. Would you be willing to risk a 1% false positive rate when it comes to being labled a doper? Unfortunately, this is still something that requires a VERY high (less than .1% failure rate) accuracy and even then, that's why they test BOTH A and B samples to drive the error rate even lower.