View all show notes and timestamps on the KoopCast website.
Episode overview:
Tammy Hanson currently serves as the Elite Education Director at the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency (USADA). In this position, she oversees the day-to-day operations of USADA’s education and engagement initiatives, drives strategic planning, and develops effective, data-driven programs that focus on clean sport education. Tammy is recognized for her commitment to supporting global anti-doping partners and ongoing international research.
Since joining USADA in 2015, Tammy has overseen a nearly twelvefold increase in education reach, highlighted by a significant rise in coach education, and has contributed to the enhancement of audience-specific content and programs.
Originally from Wisconsin, Tammy earned a Bachelor of Science in Criminal Justice from the University of Wisconsin–Eau Claire in 2006 and a Master of Science in Organizational Leadership from Colorado State University in 2019. Tammy is passionate about empowering athletes with the tools necessary to compete with integrity.
Episode highlights:
(24:01) Athlete responsibilities: testing, knowing your rights, what are you putting in your body, over 300 prohibited substances, many prohibit substances are common over the counter medications, check globaldro.com, dietary supplements, other considerations
(53:21) Advice for athletes: Pikes Peak Marathon example, different anti-doping organizations, the landscape is fractured, read the rules of your race
(1:09:54) Educational resources: links in the show notes, go to experts, don’t guess, rules change
Additional resources:
SUBSCRIBE to Research Essentials for Ultrarunning
Buy Training Essentials for Ultrarunning on Amazon or Audible.
Information on coaching-
www.trainright.com
Koop’s Social Media
Twitter/Instagram- @jasonkoop
View all show notes and timestamps on the KoopCast website.
Episode overview:
Tammy Hanson currently serves as the Elite Education Director at the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency (USADA). In this position, she oversees the day-to-day operations of USADA’s education and engagement initiatives, drives strategic planning, and develops effective, data-driven programs that focus on clean sport education. Tammy is recognized for her commitment to supporting global anti-doping partners and ongoing international research.
Since joining USADA in 2015, Tammy has overseen a nearly twelvefold increase in education reach, highlighted by a significant rise in coach education, and has contributed to the enhancement of audience-specific content and programs.
Originally from Wisconsin, Tammy earned a Bachelor of Science in Criminal Justice from the University of Wisconsin–Eau Claire in 2006 and a Master of Science in Organizational Leadership from Colorado State University in 2019. Tammy is passionate about empowering athletes with the tools necessary to compete with integrity.
Episode highlights:
(24:01) Athlete responsibilities: testing, knowing your rights, what are you putting in your body, over 300 prohibited substances, many prohibit substances are common over the counter medications, check globaldro.com, dietary supplements, other considerations
(53:21) Advice for athletes: Pikes Peak Marathon example, different anti-doping organizations, the landscape is fractured, read the rules of your race
(1:09:54) Educational resources: links in the show notes, go to experts, don’t guess, rules change
Additional resources:
SUBSCRIBE to Research Essentials for Ultrarunning
Buy Training Essentials for Ultrarunning on Amazon or Audible.
Information on coaching-
www.trainright.com
Koop’s Social Media
Twitter/Instagram- @jasonkoop
Trail and Ultra Runners. What is going on? Welcome to another episode of the Coupecast. As always, I am your humble host, coach Jason Koop, and this episode of the podcast is with the incredible Tammy Hansen, who is the US Anti-Doping Agency's Elite Education Director. Tammy's role within USADA is to educate athletes and coaches on anti-doping procedures, which mark my word as no small feat, if you can imagine the thousands of Olympic athletes that come through the various national governing bodies and are subject to, both in competition and out of competition, testing. Tammy has a hand in developing the educational programs and educating them all.
Speaker 1:Many of you out there and I would put myself in this category at one point think of the anti-doping system as one where you pee in a cup, it gets sent to a lab and then that sample turns up positive or negative. The reality, however, is that this system is far more complex, and Tammy's roles include educating athletes on the prohibited substance list, which is something that evolves every single year, the sample collection process, including what to expect during a urine or blood test Now, and if it is necessary to apply for permission to take a prohibited substance for medical treatment, in other words, a therapeutic use exemption or TUE dietary supplement education, whereabouts information and the results notification process. What I wanted to accomplish during the course of this conversation is to educate the listeners on this very landscape because, believe me, it is coming to trail and ultra-running, or maybe I should actually say it's already here. Races like UTMB and Western States already do in competition testing. In addition to this, the AFLD, which is French anti-doping, is co-opting elite trail runners into their out-of-competition pools. Yet there still remains no unifying system or body to agree on all the rules, the sanctions and the results management process, so the education front remains fractured. So consider this an initial effort to bring some of this information to the forefront. As further backdrop on this conversation, I recently reached out to Tammy and asked her to design an educational in-service for the elite athletes that I work with that was tailored specifically for them and the sport of ultra-running. This conversation is a bit of a public-facing analog to that in-service.
Speaker 1:Finally, this podcast pairs very well with Coupcast number 81, way back in the day in my conversation with USADA's chief science officer, dr Matthew Fedorick, a link to that will be in the show notes and I encourage you guys to check that out if you want to satiate your curiosity even further. Alright, that's it, let's go. I'm ready and I'm fired up. Here is my conversation with USADA's elite education director, tammy Hansen. Alright, let's do it Alright let's do it.
Speaker 1:Let's do it so, tammy, I think, at the expense of us being too jovial and personal and colloquial, we have to get down to serious business, because you and I have worked in various capacities for several years now Certainly not as long as you've been working at USADA but we've had various projects, either between the athletes that I work with or the coaching group that I work with or any kind of number of different things.
Speaker 1:But I don't want to. I certainly would like to start out with, instead of just jumping into things, I want to kind of start out with some basics to the audience, because we have to understand and appreciate that when we talk about anti-doping efforts, we are largely talking to an audience whose exposure to this revolves around the Olympic cycles. The Olympics are going to come up in Paris this year and they're going to hear some story about some athlete getting popped, and that is their exposure to the anti-doping world is through the lens of the mainstream media coverage. That's almost the entirety of the audience that's going to be listening to this. So in order to educate the audience a little bit further and peel the curtain back just a little bit on the process, can you just basically explain who USADA is first where they operate and then, more specifically, who you are within this entire wheel of USADA that we see in bits and pieces going to float around in the space.
Speaker 2:Yeah, absolutely. I'll only take about an hour to explain all of those things.
Speaker 1:Sorry, we have as much time as possible.
Speaker 2:Absolutely. So you know, at the end of the day, we care about all athletes and, regardless of whether they're Olympic, paralympic or other, we want to make sure that when an athlete gets to race or competition, that they can look to the right and they can look to the left, and they know that any athlete that they're competing against is clean, didn't cut corners, didn't take a performance enhancing drug, and so ultimately, at the end of the day, that is our mission. Now, that being said, we are contractually mandated to oversee the drug testing program for the US Olympic and Paralympic Committee, so that's actually 68 sport within the Olympics and the Paralympics that we oversee. We have, at any given time, roughly 22 to 2400 athletes in our out of competition testing program and any athlete member of a national governing body is subject to our testing. So you can imagine at the pretty large group of athletes. So at USADA we're responsible for testing and result management. We do a lot of research and education, as well as science and legal. So those are kind of some of the key components within USADA.
Speaker 2:Specifically Me, I'm the director of elite education. Yeah, I've been around USADA for about nine years now and my responsibility is to oversee the day to day operations of our education and engagement initiatives, our strategic planning and develop, you know, education programs that are data driven, education programs that work for athletes. I'm less inclined to be the person who's going to check a box. That's not why I do education. I want to do it because I want to make sure that no athlete ends up testing positive by mistake or by accident. The anti-doping realm can be complex and I want to make sure that me and the team of educators at USADA is doing everything we can to make sure that athletes and athlete support personnel are educated and not to know the tools and resources and just not make a mistake.
Speaker 1:Okay, I'm really glad that we started out here and we're going to spend a little bit more time setting the table before we get firmly into your wheelhouse, which is athlete education. You mentioned one component that I want you to expand upon just a little bit is that USADA has both their prototype. I don't know why that happened. People watching the YouTube version I have the gestures on this new laptop and people watching the YouTube version will just see a bunch of balloons. Yeah, some bunch of balloons based on some hand gesture.
Speaker 2:I'm so excited about my response? I guess so.
Speaker 1:I guess. So I guess this is going to be distracting and I'm going to have to find out a way to turn that out, no, ted.
Speaker 1:I told you you should have come here to actually record this. This is one of the reasons why. Anyway, let me get my train of thought back. You mentioned one of the things is USADA is more stereotypically associated with the Olympic movement. Right, the Olympics come around every four years. You're contractually obligated to test all of those athletes across all of the Olympic sports. However, there's also a component of USADA where you have individual clients. I'll point out one that I just happened to have more of a fan fixation with or fascination with. It was formerly with the UFC, where they contracted you guys specifically to do your anti-doping program, and that has moved on and we don't have to get into the politics of that. I want you to explain the difference between working with an Olympic program and then some of the I hate to say one off, because it sounds like I'm belittling it in some way shape or form, but some of the one off like more private clients or private organizations that you actually contract with to do some component of their anti-doping.
Speaker 2:Yeah, absolutely. Any sport that's in the Olympics and Paralympics is considered a WADA code signatory. Wada the World Anti-Doping Agency. They were created in 1999. Ultimately, the goal of WADA was to govern clean sport globally. Their responsibility was to come out with all the rules and all the substance that every Olympic and Paralympic sport in every country have to follow the same rules. If you're not a WADA code signatory, you're not responsible to the WADA code. That doesn't mean that your sport doesn't care about clean sport. It doesn't mean that you're not invested in competing clean.
Speaker 2:There's lots of sports out there who want to have a clean sport program, want to invest in the education and prevention side of things and also want to test. We have an arm or a branch in our office of folks who have those conversations. I was thinking back to the first time we met Jason, and it actually was February of 2020. Man, we had no idea what was in store for us that particular year with COVID. But that wasn't your first time talking to you, sada. You've been working with you, sada, for a number of years. That was maybe our first interaction and my first time providing education to you all.
Speaker 2:Sports like yours are very interested in clean competition and recognize the hard work that athletes put in and how one doping can impact race results and people's hard work and training.
Speaker 2:But two can also impact their health and well-being. So private other sport organizations, private sports, whatever we want to call them have sometimes just as much a mistake as our Olympic and Paralympic partners, because they also care. There are different nuances when it comes to those clients and that's where we're able to be flexible and a little bit more amendable. As long as the client fits within our core values and is able, we're able to come meet you know where the rubber meets the road on some of those key pieces that would be really important to have an effective anti-doping program. So truth of the matter is like we're not willing to throw you know three or four tests at one event and allow for any sport to say, hey, we're a clean sport because we've done a couple of tests. Like we want to make sure that from start to finish it's a rigorous program and that starts with education, because we are firm believers that it is absolutely not okay to test athlete who have not been educated first. So that's kind of where I come in and where my role is.
Speaker 1:Perfect, we're going to get into that role. I promise One more piece of table setting.
Speaker 1:Yeah, go ahead and I do think that this is actually important. So you mentioned, there are these four components of USADA. You have the testing component, you have results management, you have science and you have legal. Most people are going to come to the table and think well, you know, athlete goes, they give their blood, they pee in a cup, that sample goes somewhere and then there's a result. It's either red or green, they're either doping or they're not. And I think the encapsulation of those four different areas speaks to the testament of there has to be a whole system behind it that many people don't even see, and I'm always amazed whenever I attend your continuing education sessions, or one of the things that I'm always amazed at is when you describe any of those other components and in particular, the science and the legal component, for whatever reason. How many people are actually involved, for example, when you have somebody?
Speaker 1:that needs to get approved for a therapeutic use exemption, which we're going to go into. It's not just a person looking at a piece of paper saying, okay, this is reasonable, this is not reasonable. It's a team or committee of domain experts that all get together in a room, bat it around and they determine what to actually do with it. So I was wondering if you could go through a little bit of that context that it's not just testing, which is what most people are going to have. That's where most people's reference point is going to be within the anti-doping scene.
Speaker 2:Yeah, absolutely. I mean we have 65 employees at USADA and then we have about anywhere from 80 to 100 doping control officers throughout the United States, so definitely a larger organization than people think that we are, and you're right. Aside from that, we have an entire TUE committee and while only three doctors might be looking at a TUE, we have to have subject matter expert in all of the different medical perspectives. So we need to bring all of those people in. When it comes to science, for example, we use an athlete biological passport where we're looking at athlete samples over time to see doping. We have that TUE department. We have folks who need to provide feedback to WADA on the prohibited list and look at trend within anti-doping where our substances that are new that should be added to the list or taken away from the list. So we are not just a sample collection organization and there are some sports who go out and use a sample collection organization, have those samples sent over to a lab, the local organizing committee gets the results back and they make a determination and so that's out there.
Speaker 2:That's not what USADA is. We're really the holistic approach to anti-doping and so from start to finish, from truly an athlete's first interaction with sport within our true sport department, which is character development. We're starting with athletes at a very young age and if you're not familiar with true sport I will give it a little plug. Truesportorg is a great place for folks to go to. It's all character development and we always joke that the goal of true sport is to put USADA out of business. But if we had an awesome youth sport culture there would be no reason for a single athlete to use a performance enhancing drug ever, so there'd be no need for testing. So we do really start at that grassroots level with them, developing those values as best we can in athletes.
Speaker 1:Perfect. So let's go to the genesis of our most recent workings together TAMI. So to give the to peel back the curtain a little bit for the listeners, I recently, or at least most recently, reached out to TAMI to do an in-service specifically with my elite athletes, and the context of that in-service was that, in my evaluation of the arena, anti-doping efforts are coming into trail and ultra running. They're already here, certain races test and there's some semblance of out of competition testing happening around the world. But the bigger picture, as I'm looking at it, from a coach who's responsible for these athletes I'm responsible for their training and I, you know, have to do things in and outside of training and stuff like that is that the whole system is going to get messy. And that is because I have this background where I'm very much aware of what happens at the Olympic sport level. Sure, I'm not directly involved, but I have enough colleagues and crossover people that I work with that I know how it works at the Olympic level. And when I see this fractured nature starting to take place or that's already there and that is trying to incorporate anti-doping efforts into this fractured arena, the writing is on the wall that it's just going to be messy and that athletes are going to get wrecked because there is no unifying body or organization that is going to solely take responsibility for the whole group of athletes. It's going to be up to the athletes, it's going to be up to the team managers, it's going to be up to the races, it's going to be up to their coaches, it's going to be up to their healthcare providers and all of those different invested entities. All those different stakeholders are going to have various levels of knowledge about this whole system. Those levels of knowledge are going to vary from a whole lot to nothing. You're going to have a whole range.
Speaker 1:We're already starting to see this premise that I came up with of people getting wrecked to already emerge, even in the very limited amount of anti-doping exposure and testing that is happening in trial and ultra-running. We already have athletes that have been caught for deliberate cheating. We've had athletes that have tested positive through just getting tripped up in the system. As you mentioned, tammy, you have no interest in having athletes have a positive result when they're not trying to cheat. We have athletes that have, unbeknownst to them, broken the rules at a previous point in time and then been penalized for it in real time. We're seeing the whole scope. I guess is what I'm saying, despite the fact that there are very little efforts even starting to emerge.
Speaker 1:What I try to do is get a little bit ahead of the eight ball, get ahead of the game, bring Tammy in for some education on my elite athletes. That's the premise of what this conversation is. It's going to be a little bit of an extension of that. One of the first things I asked Tammy to do that I'm going to have her elaborate on in just a second is to look at the landscape of rules that were actually out there. We use two races, the two heads of the snake, so to speak, as the blueprint for where to work to where to work from.
Speaker 1:Those are UTMB in Western states. Let's read their rule set and let's come up with an initial set of. This is what the landscape actually looks like in terms of what athletes are subject to testing and then what rules are actually going to be in place for those athletes. We're going to use that to set the table and set the education piece of it from there, tammy, I'll ask you to re-encapsulate a little bit of that dialogue that we had last week, or that we had earlier? Was it earlier this week? I'm already losing track of the days. It was earlier this week.
Speaker 2:It was just a few days ago.
Speaker 1:Using Western states and UTMB as an example. Let's start out with that. Who is subject to anti-doping measures during those races? Can you try to encapsulate the rules that they have to start to follow in order to even participate in those races, either as an elite athlete or just an everyday athlete?
Speaker 2:Yeah, absolutely, based on my reading of both rules, one of the things also that I had recommended to Jason's athletes and I would recommend to any other athletes out there when you sign up for a race, one of the first things you really should do is go to the website and read the anti-doping policy because, to Jason's point, there's a lot of races out there that are attempting to put in some anti-doping policies.
Speaker 2:That man, those intentions are awesome. They want athletes to be able to show up to a race day and ensure that people are competing clean and that athletes who might be doping stay away from their race. That's a great place to start. When I looked at those, they're small in nature so they only take you three to five minutes to read in general. When I read them, based on what I saw for both of those races, once you register for the race, you are subject to in and out of competition testing of the athlete. Stimply registering makes you eligible to be tested. I know your athletes have had experience with that in various races some of that out of competition testing.
Speaker 1:Yeah, 100%. I wanted to go over that, not to scare everybody who's registered for the Western States 100 or for any of the UTMB races to all of a sudden have to think that they are going to be subject to, in particular, out of competition testing. They're going to have a dope and control officer knock at their door at six in the morning or register for the whereabouts program or something like that. It is out there. I think the intent of the not to speak too much for the races, but the intent of the race is to try to make sure that at least the elite athletes are aware of it. It's very hard for a race to say a race where it's a mass participation race, to say that these athletes are subject to these rules and these athletes are subject to these other rules and creating that line of delineation for where those two rule sets actually exist. I wanted to add that caveat in there just to say I get it why the races do that. That is completely understandable but needless to say, if you're an elite athlete, this is coming down the pipelines.
Speaker 1:People are going to try to put together programs in and out of competition testing programs and we need to be aware of it. So let's take the next step. This is where we're firmly in your wheelhouse, tammy. You've given this presentation. We just determined off air 400 times, and this is going to be the 401st one. And you know what? I always learned something. I always learned more than one thing. I usually learned like one or two things, and or I have a better way of explaining it, because I just regurgitate how you explain it Whenever I've listened to these which is probably the fifth or sixth time that I've actually heard it.
Speaker 1:Anyway, that's neither here nor there, so let's start to use that as a little bit of framework. What you do, what's firmly in your wheelhouse when you're going through, when you have a new group of athletes that you are bringing into the system, either singularly or as a group, where do you start? Where do you start the education process with them? What are the things that you're arming them with initially so that they can learn the scene a lot better?
Speaker 2:Yeah, absolutely, and you know, specifically for your athletes, I really did start with and thanks to your providing that information, I started with what races are they signing up for? Because we really do need to tailor some of this education to the spaces that they're going to be in and the expectations that they're going to be following. And what I specifically found and have found with some of these sports that are outside of maybe the Olympic Paralympic movement is that, in general, the water code and the prohibited list is, for the most part, the most restricted here to the rules when it comes to athletes being held liable. So as long as athletes are following the prohibited list and following the testing procedure that I'm able to explain to them, they're in a really good spot to compete clean and not to make a mistake. And so when I go through a face-to-face education session, I remind athletes that it is a complex topic. There are 11 different topic matters in the international standards of education by water, so my responsibility is to go over all 11 topics and ensure that athletes understand each component of those topics. Then what I know is that something like a TUE, a therapeutic use exemption most athletes don't care about a therapeutic use exemption until they need one. So it's difficult months in advance to provide education to an athlete on that particular topic, given that's not something that's as important to them in that moment. So we really take a step back and analyze what are the key components for an athlete right now, today, and what can we give them as resources and tools so that when they're in a moment of needing more, they can always come back and they know what that resource is. And most athletes we share that's our team as well. So we have electronic resources, but also when you're in it, when you're in the middle of it, give us a call, shoot us an email or go to one of the online resources.
Speaker 2:So, specifically speaking, athletes have a lot of rights and responsibilities when it comes to the testing process. It always sounds silly to say, but that sample is an athlete's future. So when they're getting tested, we want to ensure that, from start to finish, the sample collection personnel are following the rules, that an athlete knows what their rights are, that they know what their responsibilities are, and so ultimately, when they're in the thick of it, testing is really important. Second component to that is what they're putting in their bodies. There are over 300 prohibited substances on the prohibited list. So a lot of athletes are like oh, I'm good, I don't use EPO, I don't take steroids, I'm probably okay. But they're surprised to find out that commonly prescribed over-the-counter medications and prescriptions are also on that list. And so ensuring that every single athlete knows about the resource globalgrocom and checks every medication before it enters their body is going to be the best way to avoid inadvertent positive tests and to kind of equip them to make sure that they're not making a mistake.
Speaker 2:And then the third thing is the risk of dietary supplement. We know that athletes utilize dietary supplement to have their peak performance. We also know that there can be extreme risk in dietary supplements because they're not pre-market regulated by the Food and Drug Administration. So that's just another area for athletes that we want to make sure that we draw attention to. So while there are 11 topics, at the end of the day, the three that we want to focus in on first and foremost are knowing their rights, checking medications and understanding the risk of dietary supplements. Results management important. Our plate cleans tip center. The reporting doping super important. Tue is important as well. But if I only have an opportunity to reach them with three key messages. Those are going to be the messages.
Speaker 1:And one of the overarching aspects that makes those three particularly important is a concept that I don't think a lot of the listeners out there truly appreciate this and I say this with all due respect to the listeners, because I know a lot of the lead athletes actually don't understand this concept, probably as much as they should and that is of strict liability. I want you to explain that and what that really means. In like you can almost like, take a court of law perspective, right, that's an analogy that I always get thrown around. What does that mean within the concept of anti-doping, strict liability?
Speaker 2:Yeah, strict liability means that anything that goes in an athlete's eyes, ears, mouth, nose, skin or bum is their responsibility and it doesn't matter how it got there. So you go to, maybe, a country that doesn't have good meat contamination laws and they're pumping their meat full of steroid and it's in your liver. You're strictly liable for that. You go to a country and you drink coca-tea and it has cocaine in it. You're responsible for that. You use a dietary supplement but it's not pre-market regulated and you test positive because there was cross-contamination or a product in there that they didn't disclose to you. Still responsible, still strictly liable.
Speaker 2:Now, from a result management standpoint, it's a minimum of four years of a sanction for some of you, sada, from the WADA code that you're a WADA code signatory. I know some organizations have stricter penalties than that, but it is a minimum four years for intentional doping. If it's unintentional, obviously that's taken into consideration. So you might see a lesser penalty for those athletes, but it doesn't mean that they're not reliable and at the very least there's still a public warning put out, and I think we both know what the public warning does to someone's reputation as well. So, regardless of how it got there, that athlete held accountable for it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and that's tricky because normally in our especially in the US here we have your innocent until you're proven guilty type of perspective on things and here strictly liability. It's not quite the inverse, but it really turns it on its head where if there is an adverse finding, it's up to the athlete to say this is how this got here. I either did or didn't know about it. I wasn't trying to cheat, I was trying to cheat. It's kind of on the athlete's burden once that finding actually comes out of the results management process.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and we tell athletes you know if you're taking a dietary supplement. Of course we want to make sure that it's, you know, third party batch tested and we recommend NSF certified for sport if they're going to do that. But we recommend they save a little bit of their sample of their supplement until their test results come back. You know, where possible, if they're in another country and they're eating meat, take note of where, the restaurant location and what you ordered and stay away from, you know, liver derived products because that's where those steroids can kind of sit. So it's still, yeah, we're still asking athletes to keep record of some of that stuff and pay attention.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and it becomes really unfortunate because the both the people who are deliberately cheating and I know you can't get into this, so this can be called a commentary on my side but both the people that are deliberately cheating and then the people who get caught up in the system, who still run afoul of the rules and are still strictly liable for what is in their system, they have the exact same excuse set. I didn't know XYZ was contaminated. I had a you know this type of food product from this place. Those two things are the same amongst those two groups of people.
Speaker 1:And during the results management process and when it gets adjudicated fairly, like, there's always experts in the room and you know some of those cases get very contentious and get, you know, put up in a very bright spotlight. But from the public's perspective it's hard for them to understand and, as you said, there is a lot of reputational damage that is done by people getting tripped up in the system when they aren't deliberately trying to cheat. Yet they should know better. Right, you shouldn't let them off the hook. They're still liable for they're still strictly liable for it. But at the same time it is a tragic situation and that's how I've come to view it. It's damaging to them and it's very unfortunate that it has to be so damaging.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you're right. I will agree with you that the reasoning for testing positive could be the same whether it was unintentional or it was intentional. I would just say one of the things that I've seen, you know, over my years at USADA. Maybe I'll brag on our science team a little bit. Like they don't just accept a positive test and they don't just accept an explanation either. Like they follow the science to the T and I love that about our organization. Maybe a little bit more personal story.
Speaker 2:I very vividly remember a conversation a year ago with our director of science. I live on a ranch out here in Colorado and we were talking about bringing a pig out to my property and it you know, as a test example to try to prove what an athlete was saying was the positive test. So within USADA we're constantly following the science and if an athlete has a reason, we are tracking that down to see if it's plausible, to see if that could have happened, and you can just see that in the media. You know we've had several press releases in the last couple of years where we have tracked down and done some research and scientific studies to prove whether a case is plausible and then we utilize that to advocate for rule changes when we need to. So I would just say that is one of the things that, yes, athletes are still strictly liable, but something at USADA that we're actively trying to ensure that the athletes that are sanctioned are those who have intentionally committed the anti-doping rule violation.
Speaker 1:You already got into the next topic that I want to talk about, which are some of the rule changes, but why don't we lead into that with the most recent one that you know kind of discussed within our group? If you're at liberty to go over some of those details for what you saw that was actually advocating for and how it actually changed, because I do think the listeners that are kind of into the scene will recognize a lot of these cases that will start to like jar their memory about what they were about. So can you go through that a little bit, Tammy?
Speaker 2:Yeah, absolutely so. Just a little bit of context the prohibited list comes out every October and then it goes live January 1st, and so there is a review period in which we are able to submit feedback to the World Anti-Doping Agency studies, research, science, where we can make recommendations on what we think should be added to the prohibited list subsynthesis or methods and what we might think should be removed. And anyone out there listening if you're looking at the list and you have opinions or feelings or even scientific research about why something should be added or removed, I would encourage you to reach out to us as well, because we're happy to share that information and push for that kind of reform. And so that review process happened. Yeah, go ahead.
Speaker 1:Before you get into the review process, I think it'd be important for listeners to know how does a drug make it onto the list? It's not like people are picking stuff out of thin air and it's not like it's just based off of it provides or it has the potential to enhance performance. There's actually a pretty simple criteria list or it seems seemingly simple criteria list that WADA uses to create what goes on the prohibited list in the first place.
Speaker 2:Yeah, absolutely so. It has to meet two of the three following criteria to make it on the list. So if it enhances sport performance, if it is a health risk to the athlete and if it violates the spirit of the sport and the spirit of the sport is the oath that all Olympic and Paralympic athletes take at the Olympics which talks about the integrity of competition, upholding shared sport. So when they're looking at all of these substances, they're looking at those three criteria and if a substance falls into two of the three of those criteria, they're going to add it to the list.
Speaker 1:Perfect, okay, so now we can get into how the list gets modified every year.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I was going to say there's also a monitoring list so you can go online and you can see substances that they're keeping an eye on. So they'll keep an eye on it for maybe a couple of years and maybe you'll see it get added or removed from that monitoring list. But they're always keeping an eye on a couple of different substances that are new and forming. But for this particular year we actually saw a couple of changes, really great changes. One of them was that plasma donation are now permitted. So in prior years plasma donation was not allowed. It was a prohibited method for athletes and you know we understand the implications of blood doping and how plasma donations can impact that. But overall we were really excited to see that plasma donation was added to the permitted list and that is something that athletes want to do that they're now able to do. That was really cool.
Speaker 2:Tramadol was also now added to the prohibited list for in competition. In competition, according to the code, if that substance can't be in your system at 1159 a night before you compete through the day of competition and any sample collection that might happen after that. So to give the listeners a kind of some context, there are a whole host of substances that are prohibited at all times, things that you can never have in your system, and then there are things that WADA has deemed as only a health risk, or, you know, performance enhancement if it's physically in your body at the time you're competing, and so Tramadol was added to that. At Glucocorticoids, I've also just been a hot spot over the last couple of years, so we're just seeing some additions and changes, and so this year we saw some changes to the washout periods for Glucocorticoids as well.
Speaker 1:So those were the three major changes this year, but obviously plasma donation was one that we were excited about, and every year you can give your context on this, but this is from a you know, maybe a second or third degree removed observer. There tend to be a half a dozen or so changes every single year and out of those half a dozen, a couple of them are going to impact a large percentage of the athletes. Like they're going to look at that and say, oh, I could do this and now I can't. Or now I previously couldn't do this, like in the case of plasma donations, and now I can, and what I'm? The picture that I'm trying to paint there is. It's not, first off, it's not a static list, right, it's dynamic in the sense that it changes every single year on a regular schedule. But second, those changes, some of them tend to have a pretty broad impact.
Speaker 2:Yeah, absolutely. That's why it comes out in October because you want to make sure that athletes have enough time to see if there's an alternate medication that they can take instead of that prohibited substance, or if they have absolute medical necessity and they meet the criteria for a therapeutic use exemption that they can apply for that therapeutic use exemption with enough time to potentially get that granted. Before that January one date comes into play and that's probably where I'll give my plug for you social media channels. We you know. If you're looking for latest, up to date information on what the changes are going to be, what that prohibited list is going to look like, any rule changes, that's a great place to direct to for those things as well.
Speaker 1:Okay, so you've already mentioned this and we're going to dive right into the therapeutic use exemption process as a piece of education. So there is a what I will describe as a carve out for athletes who might need medication that is in some way on the prohibited list either prohibited in competition or out of competition or both and there's a process that they can go through to be allowed to continue to take that medication. Can you take the athletes or can you take the listeners through how you would educate the athletes on what that landscape looks like and what might fall into that category of being. I know you can't speak for every single substance but broadly, what might fall into that category of what would be approved and probably what wouldn't be approved underneath that therapeutic use exemption process?
Speaker 2:Yeah, absolutely so. I mentioned globaldrocom earlier. Every athlete, before they take any substance, should be checking that substance, that global drill. So if you're a listener out there and I were to ask you if ibuprofen is prohibited and you don't know the answer to that, you should be checking global drill before you take ibuprofen. I won't make you all do it this time. It is not prohibited. Ibuprofen is permitted in sports.
Speaker 1:But that doesn't mean you should take it. I'm going to put my plug in for not taking ibuprofen during races, but don't take it just because it's not prohibited. Keep going, Tammy.
Speaker 2:All right. So you're going to check global drill for absolutely any medication. Insulin is prohibited at all times. So if you're listening and you're like, wait a second, if I'm diabetic and I might need insulin to survive, absolutely Like. There are many times when the substance that an athlete needs to take it's medically necessary. So what they're going to do, check global drill if it's fed with the substance that was prohibited, whether that be in or out of competition.
Speaker 2:The first step is to fill out a pre-check form with USADA. That pre-check form is 10 questions long, which very quick, and our Therapeutic Use Exemption, our TUE department, will get back to the athlete within three days to let them know if they do need to file for a TUE. So that's the entire extensive, big long application and not every TUE is granted. So there does have to be specific criteria met. You have to make sure that the dose at which the athlete would be taking would only bring them back to a normal state of functioning and not give them a performance enhancing benefit. You have to make sure that there's no other medication that an athlete could take to treat that particular diagnosis. Prior use does not mean that it's just going to be granted, so you're not grandfathered in just because you've always been taking the medication and the prescription alone is not enough. So you fill out the Therapeutic Use Exemption. It goes then to that independent TUE committee team of doctors. There's going to be three people reviewing your case. They're going to have expertise in that particular medical condition and they need to come to the same medical conclusion that your doctor came to without ever seeing you as a patient. So that means you have to have enough evidence within that TUE application to prove to them necessity and that you've met all of that criteria. This is why you'll actually see quite a few Therapeutic Use Exemptions return to athletes with insufficient information.
Speaker 2:That doesn't mean it's decline, it just means they need to provide some more information. You can't just go to a doctor and say, hey, I'm having trouble breathing when I run. Can I get an inhaler? You actually have to have the specific test completed and the proof that you need the inhaler in those particular situations. So at that point a TUE would be granted if you meet the conditions and it does have an expiration date.
Speaker 2:So you only get that Therapeutic Use Exemption for a period of time and in addition to that we don't publish that information. That is confidential information. That information does go to the World Anti-Doping Agency and the athlete. If we decline it, the athlete has the right to appeal it. A lot of would also have the right to appeal that decision as well. So there are checks and balances to how those are getting approved and expiration. I'll just add to that. There are also times when athlete kind of emergencies. So we always want an athlete to get their medical needs taken care of in the moment and so if an athlete does need to have a prohibited method or a substance in an emergent situation, we want them to do that and then immediately after, when medically able to do so, they come back and file for that Therapeutic Use Exemption.
Speaker 1:Yeah, a great example of that would be is you have an accident and you need an IV administered, like at the hospital, under the supervision of a doctor, which would be a prohibited method right using an IV. That's something that you don't want to dissuade athletes from doing because it's medically necessary and their life could be hanging in the balance. There there's a process to where you can do it retroactively, if that were ever the case.
Speaker 2:Correct? Yeah, absolutely, and the IV rule is anything over 100 milliliters in a 12-hour period, no matter what the substance is prohibited. So it's actually the method of an IV. If you were to also have a prohibited substance in that bag, you would need a T-Ree for both the substance and the method. There are exceptions to that. So the exceptions are if you're admitted to the hospital, if you're part of a surgical procedure or a clinical trial. So you're right, if it's an ambulance on the side of the road that gives you the IV, that's the T-Ree. If you're admitted to the hospital and you get the IV at the hospital, that's not a T-Ree. And we don't expect ARI to know and remember that. That kind of goes back to my original. You know top three things that I want them to keep in mind. We just want to remind them in those situations to reach out to us when they can so that we can help walk them through this process and then in the end they don't have one of those in Medverton doping cases.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you guys aren't going to approve a retroactive TUE for somebody to go into some random IV bar because they've got a hangover or they want to get infused with vitamins or something like that right?
Speaker 1:It's a rigorous process. Is what you're trying to pay? I'd be remiss if we didn't mention this. I was wondering if you could provide some commentary to the listeners about this process has come under scrutiny in over the past decade really, and that scrutiny has come from a lot of different areas. Athletes are granted therapeutic use exemptions for inhalers it's such a greater rate than the general population and things like that and I'm wondering if there's anything that you can say or commentary that you could provide that speaks more specifically to this thorough nature that the athlete has to go through, or the scrutiny I guess that the therapeutic use exception is actually put under before it is ultimately approved or denied. You talked about it a little bit, but I was just wondering if you can kind of expand upon that, just for the listeners' curiosity.
Speaker 2:Yeah, absolutely. As I had mentioned, it's pretty intense, the paperwork is quite intense and that committee does not just grant any therapeutic use exemption. You can actually, if you're really interested in this, like I am maybe you're not as nerdy about anti-doping as me, but we post all this information on our annual report so you can actually see in our annual report how many T-leads have been applied for and how many have been denied, and what types of T-leads have been denied, and you can also see what the substances that are being applied for are. So we are as transparent as we can about that process. And then to that point, there's an appeal system so we don't just get to make that decision. Or if you're in another country or you're worried about another country's desire to approve those therapeutic use exemptions, just know that there's definitely an appeal process. There's more people kind of looking at those.
Speaker 2:I will also say that the T-leads are anonymous in nature. So, for example, that T-lead committee wouldn't know that's Jason's T-lead, so they get to know some basic demographics about you, but they don't get to know your name. So that also offers a level of anonymity that if they're a fan in any way of a particular sports athlete, that wouldn't allow for them to maybe grant it based on bias, so I think that also pretty important.
Speaker 1:And that's almost impossible that. I'm really glad you mentioned that last part, tammy, because that bias is almost impossible to eliminate. Because if you see a piece of paper come across your desk and I'm going to use somebody who's retired right now as an example, just to be fair and it's Michael Phelps, you can't help but to not be biased on that. If Michael Phelps asked for a TUE about whatever, and you know that there's, you know, the more gold medals than anybody else kind of on the line, that's a different psychology that those people have to kind of go through. It's really important that you mentioned that last piece of the process.
Speaker 2:Okay.
Speaker 1:I'm going to say.
Speaker 2:I'll actually say that about the testing process as well. So when a sample goes to the lab, that information is taken away from them as well. It's a serial number, so the folks at the lab don't know whose sample it is in there. So we do have those checked and balanced through the cross-lead.
Speaker 1:Okay, you already led into the next piece, which is the sample collection process. I love talking about this, so once again I'll kind of like back up. A lot of people think you pee in a cup, you give your blood, it gets mailed to some lab and they run it on a piece of equipment and that's kind of it. But it's in a water accredited setting and I'm adding that caveat very deliberately here in this case, because I do know that there are races that are out there that use anti-doping partners and things like that that might have a slightly different setup, but within your confines, within your purvey, within the way you saw operates underneath the water code. Can you describe the sample collection process? What would an athlete actually go through if they're at the Olympics and they have to provide a sample, either in competition or out of competition? What does that process look like?
Speaker 2:Yeah, absolutely. So they finish their competition, let's just go with an in-crop. So they cross over the finished line and adoping control officers at the finish line or a notifying shop around and they're going to approach the athlete and let them know that they've been selected for testing. They're going to have a letter of authority and that's the letter that shows that they have jurisdiction to test the athlete. At which time they're going to take them to adoping control station. We always recommend that an athlete bring a representative with them. They don't have to if they're over the age of 18, if they're a minor they do have to bring a representative with them, but over the age of 18 it's optional. We always encourage them to do so, especially in ultra running and trail running. You're exhausted when you finish your race. You want someone there that can advocate for your rights, as an athlete can advocate for you. Do you go to the doping control station?
Speaker 1:Sometimes you don't speak the same language right and in competition tests, many times athletes don't speak the language of the doping control officers that are there and that chaperone. One of their roles can be to help translate.
Speaker 2:Yeah, the representative can translate. You can also bring an interpreter in. Absolutely, you report immediately. There are some reasons to have a delay in reporting. If you have a medal ceremony, if you have a medical issue, a media commitment, there's a few reasons to delay. But once you've been notified, it's your responsibility to stay in that doping control officer chaperone site at all times. So you make your way to the doping control station and you wait until you have to provide a sample. Once you have to provide the sample, you're going to go to the bathroom. They're going to watch the pee leave your body and you have to provide them 90 millimeters and that's going to be for your end sample. You get to pick your P cup. You have options with P cups or you want to make sure that hasn't been tampered with in any way.
Speaker 2:Dampel collection equipment can vary. There's a couple of companies out there that do sample collection. There's Innovaro, there's Berlinger and Lottcon are three that I'm more aware of, but any of them are again going to have to follow those water standards. So there are specific standards that a sample collection equipment needs to have. Do you're going to relax your sample collection equipment Again? That's where all those serial numbers are going to come into play. So there's serial numbers on the box, serial numbers on the bottles and serial numbers on the tamper proof tape. That's all to take away who you are as an athlete. And again you're checking all of that to make sure that it hasn't been tampered with.
Speaker 2:So you're going to pee in the cup 90 milliliters If you can't quite go. You got to wait till you can provide 90 milliliters. You're going to pour about 60 milliliters in the A sample and about 30 milliliters in the B sample. So two bottles. That gets processed, closed up, handed to the dope and control officer. You're going to have to do some paperwork and part of that paperwork is putting you know all of the substances that you've recently taken, whether that's medication or dietary supplement. You're going to write that all down, give them a bunch of information and they're going to take that sample and it's going to then go to a water accredited lab. That's for urine. You might also see blood. So if we do blood, that's going to be a license Bulbata misdrying your blood and it's going to be no more than two tablespoons. Occasionally, depending on how rigorous the sport activity is, you might have to stay seated for a period of time before they collect your blood as well. Then it's going to go to the lab a water accredited lab again certain standards that need to be met in order for it to go to a lot of accredited lab and they're going to process that sample.
Speaker 2:If it's you SADA that is doing the test, we are going to give those results back positive or negative. So a lot of organizations will only tell you if that sample comes back with an adverse finding or something in it, but we're going to tell you either way. We think it's really important to give the athlete some closure, I believe, analyze the sample and if it doesn't test positive, then it can go into storage for up to 10 years. We can go back and retest that sample at any point and testing gets martyr, more innovative, less expensive. We can go back and retest for anything that was prohibited on the day that we collected. So if something was added five years down the road, we'd never go back and test that. I will also just say that the athlete has an option to check that they want a consent to research where we're taking some of that sample and having it go through various research initiatives that we have, and some athletes, they heck.
Speaker 1:No, I don't allow my sample to be under any more scrutiny than it already is.
Speaker 2:But I can say that again, all identifying markers are taken away if we are doing research on it.
Speaker 2:It's really just you believing in clean sport and wanting to do kind of something extra, or that's one way you can promote clean sport.
Speaker 2:And regardless of what we find, that sample that can't get tied back to the athlete, that particular part of the sample, so you're not under any more scrutiny as an individual person, it gets fully removed from your identity. If we do that, that if like. So that's the process and then it gets disposed of after the 10 years. If you do test positive, you then can have your B sample opened so that you can verify it, that they can verify the results. At that point you can accept the sanction that's being handed down to you, or you could take it to arbitration and that's where you would plead your case, maybe show, if you have a supplement, that you get that supplement tested to see if it was class contamination where you're trying to prove your innocence, or inadvertent finding, and after those results, well, last stop would be if you wanted to appeal what the arbitrator said, you could take it to cast the court of arbitration in sport and that's kind of a, the Supreme Court Explorer. That's the final spot.
Speaker 1:And, needless to say, this is happening in trail running right now. I mean, you guys did the testing for the Pike Speak Marathon here locally correct. So what you just described right there, with that entire process, actually happens at a real trail running race that just happens to be in both of our backyards. Now, that being said, that doesn't have to always be the case. If there are other entities that have been contracted within the race, there might be wrinkles within that sample collection process that the athletes may experience.
Speaker 1:And since the premise of all of this is that the landscape is fractured and there are different entities kind of operating in it and different entities operating certainly within the sample collection process would probably be the most wrinkles that you would actually see. What would you advise to athletes that are kind of going into that situation where it's not, they know it's not, you saw it, or they know it's somebody else. They may or may not have heard of them. What would you advise the athletes to kind of take note of, or what are the main things that they should be paying attention to during the sample collection process?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mentioned it earlier. I think, first and foremost, reading the antidoping rules of the race you're signing up for is going to be really important to your point. Some organizations will contract just the sample collection organization and for those are the people who are going to come collect the urine and they're going to send it to a lab and maybe give those results back just to the local organizing committee. We're always going to give the results back as well to the athlete. We have a pocket guide on our website and it has your rights as an athlete. We encourage you read the rules and then have access to those rights.
Speaker 2:If something you cannot refuse a test, the refusal of an antidoping rule violation but you can say, hey, wait a second, this doesn't feel right. Could we bring in the local organizing committee? Could we bring in a race official? We have some open dialogue and we really talked to the athletes about the DC or the WP control officers being super knowledgeable to ask questions. Ask them throughout the process what's happening, where your sample is going to go, get all of that information before just allowing or accepting that it's going to happen. We want you to be a good, clean sport partner as much as the process can be a burden to athlete sometimes. Our hope is that they're doing it because they believe in clean sport as well. It doesn't mean have a bad attitude about it. It just means being inquisitive, be knowledgeable and make sure that you're watching that particular process and that you have access to what your rights and responsibilities are.
Speaker 2:That pocket guide is a really great written place for that kind of thing so that you can just say, hey, wait a second. If you're only offered one pink cup, for example. Hey, could I have a couple options of pink cups. I'm pretty sure that's one of my rights and I would feel more comfortable with making sure that I have some options here. That would be something. Or if they're not allowing you to have that delay to the dope and control station, there are reasons that you know it allowed. Just be advocating for yourself.
Speaker 2:What I have found, regardless of the organization, is normally if you're just having dialogue and talking to them about what your needs are, as long as those are within the constraints of the rules, they're pre-emendable to be flexible to that and allowing for those black things. But ask questions, ask where the loud is going to be that they're sending this to and when you can expect results back. Some of those are really good questions. Knowing who's doing that sample collection is also really important. We oftentimes get athletes who come to us and are like, hey, when am I getting my results back? And we did not collect that sample, even just taking a little picture or screen grab or writing down. The information is really important as well. You want to know who's testing you.
Speaker 1:I can let me back into two pieces of just recent experience to try to paint this picture from a very cold face point of view, having worked with athletes that are in this. Utmb has changed their anti-doping partner over the years. They use Quartz for a number of years and they're no longer around. Now they're using the AFLD, which is French anti-doping. I did not. That was a change that I was unaware of until I actually was a chaperone for one of my athletes during one of the UTMB tests. I asked the doping control officer at the station who is doing this test. They said the AFLD. I'm like okay, now I know who's actually doing this. To your point, a lot of times athletes just assume or they don't care of who's actually collecting this sample. If we back up even further when UTMB was using the Quartz system, once again, this is just my experience that I'm relying here. Don't try to project this onto anybody else.
Speaker 1:One of my first experiences with Quartz is just something that you mentioned, where an athlete was offered to pee in a cup and it was just one cup, me knowing the rules immediately, red flags and sirens and bells and whistles and everything else immediately went off in 10 different directions at alarm level 10. The end result of that, not to belabor the point about it, is that both the athlete and myself who was trying to take responsibility for this athlete, who had just run 100 miles in the freaking mountains, very deteriorated, and not with themselves, to your point. Earlier we both took a heightened level of scrutiny to what was going to happen with those samples. We asked a lot of questions, we made sure that we know where the barcodes were and things like that, and where is this going and who's collecting it and what the chain of custody is. We just asked a whole lot more questions as a little bit of a fail safe, because we had those alarm bells, kind of like, going off initially.
Speaker 1:Super important point there. Let's start out with the basics. Who is this and do they have the right to take this sample and under what jurisdiction do they actually have to do the sample? Because, as you mentioned, tammy, it is their future. I want to pivot to out of competition testing in just a second Before I do. Is there anything else that you want to wrap up on the end comp side, tammy?
Speaker 2:I definitely appreciate that example that you gave. I would just say that I want to ensure that everybody out there knows that. You saw it in the resource. If you have questions, if something you just want to know more information, please, absolutely when it comes to testing practice, always feel free to reach out to us in those particular situations or if you're in that moment, as I said, local organizing committee officials. Just pause, it's okay to pause.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I completely agree with that council. Okay, initially I was thinking this is going to be wild speculation, but it's actually not. Out of competition testing is in trail and ultra running. There have been a number of athletes French athletes for the most part that have been co-opted into the AFLDs, which is French anti-doping co-opted into their out of competition testing pools through some mechanism that we're not going to elaborate on here. I still don't understand it, to be honest with you, but needless to say, they're subject to out of competition testing, just like any Olympic level swimmer or weightlifter or bad men in player or whatever is actually subject to, where you have to provide a sample, not just at the start and or the finish line. They will come to your house and actually collect the sample from you.
Speaker 1:That is a completely different kettle of fish as compared to in competition testing. In competition, testing is difficult enough because of all the dynamics of the competition in any number of different areas that Tammy just mentioned. Let's set the table for out of competition. Let's just take the assumption that we can kind of revert to your standard Olympic programs, where somebody is selected for a team. They're therefore subject to out of competition testing. What does that actually look like for an athlete. Where does it start and how do you educate the athletes on that particular part of this anti-doping process?
Speaker 2:Yeah, if we're talking about our Olympic, paralympic athletes, we work heavily with their national governing bodies to identify the top level athletes. So you know are going to be athletes who are competing really well or maybe having some really great place finishmen. So we're going to look at each sport and identify who essentially is the group of athletes that is at the top, and we're going to be adding those athletes to the registered testing pool or clear athlete program, which is our out of competition test. We are going to get an email from that, but they're in one of our testing pools and they're going to have to file what's known as whereabouts for us, and so that's where they're giving us information that allows us to find them out of competition randomly. So no known tactic for those athletes.
Speaker 1:Typically that's the biggest pain point. The athlete's like I don't know where I'm going to be on Tuesday. Am I going to be at the grocery store? Am I going to be lifting weights? Am I going to be on the couch sipping my coffee? Like that's the piece of the whereabouts. Reporting tends to rub people the wrong way More often than not.
Speaker 2:Yep, you know, the first time an athlete gets tested they're usually so excited I've made it, you think I'm good enough to be delving and then, yeah, I didn't know whereabouts come. But that you know. I like to think they're all doing their part for clean sport and that they're happy to do it. But you're right, it is. You know, it is an area that requires a lot of the athletes and we are asking for regularly scheduled activities. So it doesn't mean going to the grocery store or a movie. It's going to be, you know, those more regularly scheduled things and at the end of the day, the goal of that program is only to be able to find them out of competition. So as long as they're doing their part, providing enough information for us to randomly find them, that you know that 10 tends to be the best way to do that, and I it is interesting that you're seeing more and more of the trail and ultra running. You know folks thinking about this out of competition testing and that again, the attempt there is pretty awesome.
Speaker 2:We've seen a handful of our client pay groups who have wanted to start doing that, and we always say it starts with education. So for anyone out there who really wants to focus in on out of competition testing. It's just so important to make sure that all of those athletes have been educated and understand what that looks like. And I'll be honest with you, I do often testify in some of our arbitration cases about the education that an athlete has received leading up to it. Because, as I mentioned in the beginning of this, education has to come before testing and we want to make sure that if an athlete did intentionally dope, that we have that they at least do better right, Like that we, that they knew what was happening, and so that's why, for our out of competition testing, every athlete has to do an e-learning tutorial before they even submit their whereabouts, so they all are educated in that way. And then we know that athletes learn best face to face, so we always try to supplement it with some face to face education as well.
Speaker 1:To that point to plug a podcast. In a couple of weeks I'm going to bring on somebody who did a lot of that face to face education and Gabe Bida, who you know no longer works for you. So I think it's got a great parallel to trial and ultra running. So one of the points of consternation with booting out of competition testing up within the trial and ultra space is who's in the pool, right? I mean, typically what will happen is a team will say these people are in the pool. You guys can look at the competitive landscape of an Olympic level sport and say these people should be in the pool.
Speaker 1:But in this like very fractured world of trail and ultra running, where there's no national championship, there's no world championship, yet we have some surrogates for it and things like that.
Speaker 1:Determining who the pool actually is becomes kind of the first step in establishing an out of competition testing program for a particular sport. So I wanted to kind of get that out of the way before the next, before the next piece of it, because there are going to be some people out there that are thinking why don't we just test trail and ultra runners out of competition? Well, there's a whole series of steps that has to be put into place before that actually happens. And the first one is who the pool is, and then how you're going to send the dope and control officers to them, because they're located all around the world, and on and on and on. But let's assume that we've got an athlete, a DCO, a dope and control officer shows up to their house to do an out of competition test. What does that procedure like, look like, and are they subject to like different types of tests out of competition versus in competition? And what does that run of show? What does that run of show look like for the athletes?
Speaker 2:Yeah, and I will just say, when it comes to the testing pool, again, that's one of the places that you saw that works with client on right. So we don't just throw a dart at a dartboard and hope that it sticks. We absolutely have a test distribution plan. We're looking at the sport as a whole and who are the folks that perhaps should be in a testing pool? So we would help a sport, you know, start to identify and look at that and have those conversations well in advance.
Speaker 2:When it comes to out of competition testing, you know that of the finish line it's at your house. So we're showing up at somebody's home. It's going to be a dope and control officer. Now, when they're watching the athlete go to the bathroom, it's going to be the same gender dope and control officer as it is the athlete. So, for example, if the dope and control officer is a male and they show up at my house, they would also have to bring a representative with them or a chaperone sorry with them. That would be a female. So they're going to come to your house.
Speaker 2:We are testing for those out of competition substances. So the sample collection process is. The only differences in the collection is going to be, that it's a different location and that we're testing for different substances at that time. Other than that, the process remains quite similar. And I mentioned home, but it doesn't just have to be home, right, it could be a restaurant, it could be a hotel when you arrive at an event before the event happened. So there are many different places and, again, just reiterating, the goal is that you don't know. No-note attesting.
Speaker 1:And that tends to be the gold standard that a lot of people will kind of put the mark on, because that's what sporting systems want to adhere to where they can show up at an athlete's house kind of unannounced, do a test, create a profile for that athlete and then determine who's clean and who's not. A lot of attention gets put on the in competition testing because it tends to be the one that's. It's not necessarily the least expensive, but it's the easiest to deploy because everybody's at the same place at the same time. Here you have a person, or sometimes two people, going to a single athlete's location, wherever they listed as, and collecting a sample, and I think the listeners can kind of imagine that process is quite laborious, right? There's only so many people that you can go and send out in the field to do these types of things.
Speaker 2:Yeah, absolutely. From a financial perspective, you're going to get more bang for your buck by testing at an event because everybody's in the same location and you can maximize your resources of dope and control officers and while I mentioned, we have 80 to 100 throughout the United States. It doesn't mean that they're in every city, right, so they're having to travel to the various athletes locations and we have some athletes to live in the really not well-known locations of the United States. So, absolutely, and that's where that whereabouts is so important as well If we're deploying a dope and control officer for an out of competition test, you also want to make sure that it's a successful test, that we're able to find the athlete, but they're going to be able to provide that sample, and so that is why a lot of sports outside of the Olympic and Paralympic movement will start with in competition testing.
Speaker 2:So some might argue that if those substances are in their system at the time of competition, that that is maybe more of a way to catch performance enhancement as well. Again, that's where our science team is working at when is the best time to test the athlete? Who should we be testing? What substance should we be testing for? So maximizing resources across the board is what we're doing.
Speaker 1:Okay. So now we have this, we've kind of painted the picture that we want people to become educated, first and foremost, and absent a national governing body or an entity to facilitate that. Let's kind of run through the resources, because there are going to be elite athletes that are listening to this that, hey, I just want to know what's going on and I kind of don't know where to go. And this is where I bring you in, because I'm in that same boat. I have athletes that are in the same boat. I'm going to bring in the best. I'm going to bring in Tammy to go help educate them.
Speaker 1:But if they're no, seriously, I mean, you've always done a really wonderful job with it, because I could do it, but I would screw it up. But for the athletes that are, but for the athletes that are out there that want to do everything they can just to figure the scene out, because, at the end of the day, it is going to be their responsibility. Nobody is going to hold their hand and, you know, make them clear this checkbox and that checkbox and things like that, the athletes, the one at the end of the chain is going to be absolutely going to be their responsibility. Let's set them up with some resources so that they can check it out. And for the listeners, I'm going to have all of these in the show notes. So, regardless of your platform player of choice, just go down to the show notes. I'll have links for all of these that you can that you can check out that we're about about about to go over. So, tammy, you can have the floor here. Where should the athletes be going to get more educated?
Speaker 2:Yeah, and I'll start with you know, don't get it wrong, don't guess. So, as you had mentioned, you could share it, but you don't want to get it wrong, and I think that's this place where we want to make sure that anybody who's speaking to Anthony Doping doesn't give any misinformation. And rules change. Rules change every year, so, where you know, where possible, we want any athlete support personnel to guide people to resources versus telling them the exact rule, simply because we, just athletes, have too much to lose to get it wrong that I the usage rule has changed over the years. The average coach isn't necessarily going to be in tune with those rule changes, and so that's like guiding and directing to resources is going to be the most imperative.
Speaker 1:Can I expand upon that just a little bit?
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:You can get up on a soapbox for just one second. Don't rely on your fellow athletes. It's kind of to that point. We do this within supplements, we do this within training. We shouldn't be doing those across either of those categories. We should actually be going to the experts and going to the resources that these experts put together, especially when they're such, they're of such consequence. So to Tammy's point, go to these resources and if you ask me and if my athletes ask me, the first thing I'm going to do is have them go to those resources and then I might come up with a backup plan of hanging to provide some color commentary on it, but I can't emphasize that enough is.
Speaker 1:We are peers. They are all very well intended when they want to give us advice. Sometimes that advice is just doesn't have the entire picture associated with it. So keep that in mind when we're asking things of friends and stuff like that. Go to the source. Go to the expert first, particularly if you are in one of these audiences that has a vested interest in it, whether that's a race director or an elite athlete or a coach. Go to the people that know this the best. Go to the source of the information and as much as we like our friends, maybe this isn't the best area to kind of rely on their advice for.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I still appreciate you saying that. I would say that 25% of our job is also dispelling misinformation. One person has one experience. That then is the telephone experience where, by the time it gets to us, it's this blown out story that isn't really what happened in the first place. So absolutely going to the resources is going to be the most important, and for us, that best resource is going to be our website.
Speaker 2:On our website, usadaorg, we have an athletes tab and it walks you through, step by step, anything that you could possibly need to know. So you know there's a three minute video on there. That's just a one-on-one. The view got somebody that you think just need a quick overview. That's quick and easy for them. So the website is incredibly comprehensive and it is always up to date. You can also just Google it sorry, do the search button in our website if you're interested in thumbtitting.
Speaker 2:So if you want to know more about DVD products, you just Google CBD products and we'll show you our articles. Or you know five things to know about energy drinks, like we're constantly putting out articles as well. So if they're the topic that you want to know more about. More specifically, the EPO, we'll do a whole article on it. We have handbooks and the pocket guide and nutrition guide and supplement guides, so it really is a one-stop shop for any of those resources. But it is also reading and we know that's not the way that all athletes consume information. So sometimes you want to read up on something and you want to. You're interested in it. But if you're interested in a quick little tidbits of information 30 to 60 seconds of something that's going to be our social media platforms the Instagram, you know, facebook, tiktok if you want, we're on there and Twitter.
Speaker 1:You guys like it banned from TikTok with today's news, who knows?
Speaker 2:It's coming.
Speaker 1:It's coming down the pipe.
Speaker 2:I almost didn't mention TikTok, but we'll see what happens there. But yeah, if you're somebody who likes video messaging, quick and digestible, that's going to be the place for you. And then, as I mentioned, the three kind of electronic resources are going to be globaldrowcom, to check medication. We have supplement connect, which is high risk list of dietary supplement, and then NSF certified birch sport, for any certified product of dietary supplements. So, though, they're high level where we're at. If you really want to get into education, we have e-learning tutorials that you can take. Wada has an e-learning tutorial. If you're looking for a more broad global perspective, less of a US based perspective, although I will say that we do try really hard to make sure that our resources are accessible for all athletes competing internationally as well.
Speaker 1:I'm going to give a special plug to two of those. Not that anyone is more important than the other, but I think these are the two that are going to be the most handy for athletes, and that's globaldrow and NSF. If you get any medication, and even if it's an over the counter medication or something that's prescribed from your doctor, a lot of times you guys think your medical doctors and healthcare providers are some how omnipotent and they know all of the anti-doping rules. They don't care, sorry, unless they're a doctor that provides services specifically for Olympic level athletes that will contract for the Olympic teams. They don't know, and so run all those substances through globaldrow.
Speaker 1:It is incredibly easy to use. It takes five seconds and then you have it and then you can start to dive down the rabbit hole of what's prohibited and what's not and what's the brand name of this and the chemical name of that. It's just an absolutely fantastic resource. But, more importantly, it gets you in the habit of doing it because the situation is dynamic. You go in, you get sick during the winter year, you get prescribed something by your doctor, go to globaldrow Very simple procedure getting the habit of that. And the second one is NSF. They've got a great app as well where you can just scan a barcode. Scan a barcode, it'll tell you if it's contaminated or not, if it's certified by that entity. Those two ones I always put as the first two resources that I indoctrinate athletes with to start using if they're going to be subject to any sort of antidoping control.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I agree.
Speaker 1:Tammy, this has been awesome. I'm going to leave it to you for any final notes on either how athletes can access anything related to USADA or you specifically, or I'm going to prompt this a little bit. If there's a group out there, like a race organization or a group of trail runners, that want to dive into it more, how could they get ahold of you or USADA or any of these organizations?
Speaker 2:Yeah, absolutely so. We have a client services page on our website as well that talks through hey, want to get started? Where should you start with any antidoping program? So if you're not ready to have a phone call with us, but you want to spy on us a little bit and see what we're doing in the client services space, you can go to our website. If you feel like you're ready to have a conversation with us. I'm always willing to be the conduit to connect you to our athlete services team. Or you can also just email client services at usadacom for that information or usadaorg for that information as well.
Speaker 2:And, jason, I know you're not looking for this and you're not going to like me saying it, but I can't thank you enough for advocating for your athlete when it comes to education and trail running and ultra running as a whole. I have been constantly impressed with your advocacy in the race level, your work with USADA I mean for years and years beyond my time at USADA and the care for prevention and education. Ultimately, it just at the end of the day, goes to the care and well-being of the athletes and making sure that if they're going to be put under testing protocol, but they're educated, and so I would just thank you for having me on today, as well as your constant care for the athlete, some of the folks in the community.
Speaker 1:I appreciate that sentiment, tammy. The job has never finished. Yeah, a lot of times.
Speaker 1:I've been working on this for a long time. It's two CEOs or COOs removed from you guys, way back to John Frothingham's days, and those of you that have been around anti-doping will realize instantly how long that is. And many times I feel like we take one step forward and one step back, and one step forward and one step back. But you know, we're still going to hear, you're still going to be here and go and fight for it. And one of the reasons that I am a staunch of an advocate for the athletes as I am is because, going back to my original premise with this is I do realize that it's going to come down the pipe and I do realize it's going to be messy and I do realize that 99 percent of the people out there are well intended. So we've got everything kind of aiming in the right direction. It's not hard or it's not easy to execute. It's just not because there's no overarching entity to help it kind of facilitate and get taken across the finish line. So that's why I'm doing what I'm doing and I just love the athletes that I work with and I would just want to make sure that their future is intact, both on the performance side and on the anti-doping side of things.
Speaker 1:So right back at you, tammy. I'm always appreciative of what you do for the athletes that I've brought to you and any of the special circumstances that you've run traps for me in the background. I've always been appreciative of that, and also when you've come into our coaching group as well, I can speak for them. They've always gotten a lot out of the information that you have that you have relayed to them. So keep doing what you're doing. I hope that your inbox doesn't get flooded too much, but actually I do. Sorry, sorry, you will take it. Go hire a few more staff or hire a few more interns to handle the flood of inquiries that you're going to have after this. I would encourage the list.
Speaker 1:I would encourage the listeners. This is one this is a heavy one where you'll want to go on the show notes. If you want any of this stuff, if you want any more detail on any of these resources, just go ahead and check out the show notes. They're all there. You don't have to memorize everything that we just visitorg, or is it dot com? Just go check out the links in the show notes. I don't learn a dime from you guys clicking on any of that stuff. Please check it out. It is a wealth of information because, as we mentioned throughout the podcast, it's going to be your responsibility and I didn't know it's not going to be good enough excuse. All right, tammy, thanks for going to let you go. That's it for today. I really appreciate you.
Speaker 2:Awesome. Thanks, Jason.
Speaker 1:All right folks, there you have it. There you go. Much thanks to Tammy for coming on the podcast today. I always appreciate working with her. She always has done a tremendous job Whenever I have brought her in to work with our coaching staff or athletes or just need counsel to try to figure all this stuff out. So I'm much appreciative of her principle approach that she takes to anti-doping and also her willingness to really do anything that she can to help educate athletes.
Speaker 1:Mark my words Anti-doping efforts are going to continue to come into the trail and ultra running space. So if you are an elite athlete, you coach elite athletes, you're a race director, or if you just want to participate in the dialogue, make sure that you get yourself educated first. There are a ton of links in the show notes. Go and check all of those out if you are any one of those interested parties, because education is the very first step in all of this and I realized that this landscape is going to be fractured and we're going to go through some learning lessons and some bumps in the road as these things start to get rolled out. However, especially if you're an elite athlete, or especially if you're a coach to elite athlete I don't know is not going to be an excuse, because there's enough resources out there and you should be protecting yourself as much as possible so that you shouldn't have to use that as an excuse.
Speaker 1:All right, folks, next week we are going to continue the conversation with my good friend, karen Malcolm, who is on the PTRA, the Proprestional Trailrunners Association's Working Group. She's the head of their anti-doping working group and we're going to talk a little bit more about this landscape and some of the things that make it makes it problematic and also complicated to actually deploy some of the things that a lot of the trail runners and coaches like myself and races actually want to deploy and, in particular, out of competition testing. Y'all stay tuned for that conversation. It is sure to be a heater. That is it for today, folks, and, as always, we will see you out on the trails.