View all show notes and timestamps on the KoopCast website.
Episode overview:
Corrine Malcolm is a coach, podcaster, on-air personality, and the head of the Pro Trail Runners Association anti-doping working group.
Episode highlights:
(14:34) Anti-doping goals in ultra-trail: an internationally recognized governing body, WADA compliance, moving past guerilla education, clarity and common rules
(39:50) Managing cost: a federation, race organization, or other relevant entity could serve as a signatory, a less official system could also partner with USADA, being part of WADA is more convenient, the PTRA cannot be a signatory, finding this entity is a challenge
(1:01:09) Next steps: inventing the “UTI”, what happens after an entity like this exists, establishing a global testing pool, distance-agnostic testing
Additional resources:
https://corrinemalcolm.com/
PTRA-https://trailrunners.run/
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:
Corrine Malcolm is a coach, podcaster, on-air personality, and the head of the Pro Trail Runners Association anti-doping working group.
Episode highlights:
(14:34) Anti-doping goals in ultra-trail: an internationally recognized governing body, WADA compliance, moving past guerilla education, clarity and common rules
(39:50) Managing cost: a federation, race organization, or other relevant entity could serve as a signatory, a less official system could also partner with USADA, being part of WADA is more convenient, the PTRA cannot be a signatory, finding this entity is a challenge
(1:01:09) Next steps: inventing the “UTI”, what happens after an entity like this exists, establishing a global testing pool, distance-agnostic testing
Additional resources:
https://corrinemalcolm.com/
PTRA-https://trailrunners.run/
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 coop cast. As always, I am your humble host, coach jason coop, and this episode of the podcast is with a voice and a face. If you're watching the youtube version, that you are probably familiar with, and that is the incredible Corinne Malcolm. You probably recognize Corinne from her exploits behind the mic on many of today's top ultra marathons, where she provides probably, I think, the best color commentary in the entire game. She is also a podcast host in her own right, most notably on the On Trail Society, which is part of the Free Trail Network, as well as the Trailhead, which is part of Ultra Sign Up, which I was actually just recently on. Corinne is also one of the co-authors of my book. I consider her a close friend, but today's conversation takes advantage of another one of Corinne's many roles. She does a whole heck of a lot of things here, and that is she is the head of the anti-doping working group for the Professional Trail Runners Association, and in this role, let me tell you folks, she has her hands full, because this is something that is both incredibly important and also ridiculously hard to actually pull off.
Speaker 1:Last week, during my podcast with USADA's Tammy Hansen, we went over a little bit of this fractured landscape that exists in trail and ultra running, where there is no overarching entity to really organize anti-doping efforts. Corinne has raised her hand and volunteered to try to take charge of that, and that is no easy effort, and so what I wanted to do throughout the course of this podcast is bring to light that effort and what is going on behind the scenes. And why is it actually so difficult? A little bit of a sinister motivation, as I hope it piques the curiosity of a lot of the public out there, so that we can actually help catalyze a lot of these efforts. Because it is going to be important for trail and ultra running to really take control of this on our own accord and by ourselves, because I don't think anybody's coming in to save us any time soon.
Speaker 1:All right, folks, buckle up for a heater of a conversation. Here it goes, we are getting into it with corne Malcolm today, all about the anti-doping efforts in the trail and ultra running space. All right, let's do it. Corinne, okay, first off, everybody's used to hearing you behind the mic, but you've got a few different roles that you play within the trail and run. You've got a few different roles that you play within the trail and run the whole community, basically. So let's go over that first, and then one of those roles is going to be what we talk about.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I feel like I wear too many hats and maybe bisect the sport from too many directions at times. I think most people know me now as a commentator and speaker of the sport. However, I do technically still run races, which is, I think, something that I'm forgetting as well, and maybe it's at the great demand of the other things that I've got going on Coach, mentor, advisor I feel like I'm wearing all those hats Wr writer, editor, etc. But I'm also on the board of the Pro Trail Running Association, or the PTRA had to convince the Europeans that a PTA would be kind of weird for the American athletes. No parents association. I largely work on trying to figure out the anti-doping landscape of the sport. I chair a small group of athletes that will continue to, I think, ramp up their work.
Speaker 1:Year one has been a little bit slow and just meetings, but that is largely my role there is to champion what the anti-doping landscape and framework looks like in trail and ultra running, since we are a new or niche or sport that doesn't really fall into an existing category which turns out has a lot of problems okay, we're going to talk about some of those problems, but before we get into that, let's go over the anti-doping landscape previous to the ptra, because I think that's a little bit of table setting that we need to discuss in order to get us to where you are currently at, because we're always basing things off of previous history, right, I mean, if you go back even just with the formation of wada, before that, each ngb was responsible for their own internal anti-doping efforts.
Speaker 1:So if you can think about USA Wrestling, they did the anti-doping for the wrestlers versus USADA having jurisdiction over all of the NGBs and WADA having jurisdiction over USADA and all the other NATOs, the national anti-doping organizations. So let's go back a little With that as a little bit of a backdrop. Let's kind of go back to what has transpired, or not, within the trail and ultra running space to take us to where we're at today.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so previous to any sort of water adjacent, anti-doping in the sport of trail and ultra running.
Speaker 1:Did you just say WADA adjacent?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I did.
Speaker 1:Okay, I just wanted to get that terminology.
Speaker 2:Yeah, because I feel like it is kind of what we're working towards feels WADA adjacent. Fair enough, if not WADA, just WADA itself. But previous to that we have had kind of I mean, it's still the Wild West. I want to be clear there, it's still the Wild West. There I've had kind of I mean, it's still the Wild West. I want to be clear there, it's still the Wild West. There's still lots of national differences. There's still lots of race to race differences or race series to race series differences.
Speaker 2:The only kind of antidoping that many of us experienced and I'm using air quotes here on an audio format was called Quartz, which was not antidoping but at the same time was anti-doping, depending on who you asked about it. Technically it was supposed to be about athlete health, but they also had a pretty clear stance on what anti-doping it was and wasn't. If TUEs were or weren't legal. They were kind of a purity-driven guised-as-health-conc organization that masqueraded as anti-doping but was utilized in the Golden Trail World Series, was utilized in the Ultra Trail World Tour, was utilized even early on in the UTMB World Series, but it had its own rules and regulations that seemed to change and seemed to be completely in a like, not enforceable but very scary for athletes.
Speaker 1:So not water adjacent, not water compliant, and very much its own unique situation well, and I can remember when the court system first kind of came on the scene and you had this really prototypical response from the athlete cohort, it was like, oh hey, this is great, we've made it right. And that happens when athletes are kind of co-opted into an organization like USADA or the AFLD. They kind of wear it initially as a badge of honor. Right, they've been working their whole careers to get to a certain level and then this concept that they're now being monitored right for performance enhancing drugs is a little bit of a badge of honor that they have quote unquote made it to some to some esoteric level. The shine on that apple came off very quickly after maybe the first year or maybe two of implementation.
Speaker 1:And I remember this very vividly when the athletes started kind of speaking up about this initial court system and a lot of its misgivings, which you had kind of just touched on, and many of the athletes were afraid to say anything about it because they didn't want to be perceived as anti-anti-doping right. You have this in air quotes anti-doping system, of course kind of put in place very specifically for the UTMB races and some other races as well that we don't need to really get into, and you have this initial woohoo, this is here, we're all happy about it, you know, this is a good thing. And then, once the curtain got peeled back a little bit and people got to kind of see what was going on, peek underneath the hood and actually experience it, that tide turned very quickly, at least from an internal perspective. But then from an external perspective it took a whole lot longer because of that sentiment that you don't want to unwind progress. Right, it was viewed as initial point of progress and you don't want to kind of unwind that At a similar time, right just to timestamp all of this stuff.
Speaker 1:The PTA gets formed, right, there's this overlap between the court system and the PTA actually actually forming, and I want to kind of take the listeners through first off, like you can, like, set your role within the ptra and who you uh work with within this anti-doping group, but go over that initial like piece of overlap where the board forms. There's still this system here that the athletes are starting to, they're starting to have some misgivings about and starting to initially speak up about it after it's been in place for a few years, and then we'll use that as the framework for this pathway that you're now trying to carve out yourself. I mean, you're literally trying to build a new trail into the community and into the ecosystem. But let's just kind of start with that transition and this overlap between the PTtra and the court system and then your involvement yeah.
Speaker 2:So the ptra was formed at a time when I think we had a lot of question marks in the sport.
Speaker 2:I was prompted by this notion that courts was feeling more and more like medical discrimination, in part because they took a really hard line anti-tue or therapeutic use exemption stance and obviously there are TUEs that are abused in other sports et cetera. But it felt like medical discrimination. I've got friends, colleagues, teammates who have autoimmune diseases, who have really horrible asthma, who have conditions that require that they are on medications that need a TUE, and that fourth is stance was that well, if they need that substance, that medication et cetera in order to compete, then maybe running is bad for them and they shouldn't be running because that is jeopardizing their health. If they feel like their health is jeopardized by running without that needed medication, then it must be jeopardizing their health and they shouldn't run. Which is like very backwards and made me really upset and we kind of that was happening as we were pushing to form the ptra and that was actually the brainchild of, you know, killing jorne and francesco poopy and a number of other individuals who kind of got the initial lift off the ground. We held a general assembly to elect board members. I was one of those people elected and was elected, I think, in part because of my experience within an anti-doping system previously as a US biathlete competing for the US during that 2010 to 2014 Olympic cycle. So having a clear knowledge of what that should look like versus what the sport was experiencing and being able to really paint those two in contrast for other athletes and point out kind of where there were deficits and where we're having the wool pulled over our eyes came on to kind of chair that working group.
Speaker 2:But you know, I think in part the formation was we're at this like great flux in the sport in which there's enough money coming into it, there's enough professionalization coming into it, that if we wanted things to be in the athlete's favor, to be in the sports favor moving forward, we had a very finite window to act before things just become the default, the status quo. We're in this. We're in this period of time where other sports don't have that. Maybe they've gone on too long. If they think that something's, they really can't do anything about it. If you want to be the best cyclist in the world, you're racing UCI events, independent about how you feel about the UCI.
Speaker 2:We're in this part of sport where we can still, I think, make critical change in anti-doping, in kind of our ethos, in athlete representation et cetera. And so the PTRA is forming kind of, as there's this momentum building in the sport, and Quartz was one of the first things that we pushed back really hard against and I think was quickly eliminated and that also, you know, falls into line with, you know, two years ago, an Ironman coming on as a 45% shareholder in UTMB Ironman has more established anti-doping practices. So all of a sudden we were kind of able to lean into other organizations who kind of could not laugh at but see that the current system was ineffective and not something that we wanted to continue to invest in.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I kind of take it was one of those things where you don't know what you don't know, right? I mean, you very eloquently just said that you part of your kind of like expertise that you bring to the PTRA boards is you have like actual experience with this as an athlete, and not many trail and ultra runners actually have that type of experience of being under a national governing body, having to submit your whereabouts for a quote unquote real anti-doping program, having to submit your whereabouts for a quote-unquote real anti-doping program. And once you experience that, you kind of know what the standards and the norms are and I guess like the expertise and the sophistication that's actually required amongst all those programs and the people that really administer them. And so I don't think anybody faults the trail runners or the professional trail runners or the trail running community for initially kind of getting the wool pulled over their eyes or for a period of time, because you literally don't know what you don't know. You don't know what you don't know. So now, like the community is in this like state of ambiguity, right when races like the Western States 100 adopts some in competition testing, utmb adopts some in-competition testing, utmb adopts some in-competition testing. The AFLD is starting to co-opt trail and ultra runners into their out-of-competition testing pools, and that's a kind of a weird mechanism that I don't even profess to understand.
Speaker 1:But there's no universal. Hey, this is what we are all going to do. And? But there's no universal. Hey, this is what we are all going to do. So, corinne, you get to play queen of the world right now. Right, and I know you've thought a lot about this and you're going to be able to articulate this very well. Let's teleport ourselves to three or four years down the line, right, and you have everything established, that, everything established that you have wanted to establish from the get-go. Describe to the listeners what that looks like, and then what we're going to do is we're going to try to build the path forward. What does that look like if we just say, okay, it's done, it's built, the house is built, we've got all the furnishings in there, it works properly, it's connected to utilities and all this kind of stuff. What does that look like within the anti-doping space, within trail and ultra running, in terms of just what are you trying to build?
Speaker 2:yeah, that is the the question. That is what I've been kind of banging my head against the wall over for more than a year now.
Speaker 2:We've had we've personally had this conversation for many years, probably going back five or six years at this point, just with my own time in the sport, you know, and the iterations of potential anti-doping man, if I could just say we're 10 years from now and this is exactly what's happening. It's that we have a, an international governing body that's recognized, that allows us to have a signatory, which means that we are completely wada compliant. We we're not WADA adjacent, we're not like a very good anti-doping but not quite WADA situation.
Speaker 1:You're not redheaded stepchild WADA. You're like WADA, full WADA.
Speaker 2:Legit. We're legit WADA Legit. That's the goal, I'm sure that's in their code somewhere.
Speaker 1:No WADA. Adjacent Legit.
Speaker 2:Yeah, we're legit. Wada, which means adjacent legit. Yeah, we're legit, which means that we've all agreed to the same terms to the thing that has existed for decades. You know, we don't need to reinvent the wheel anymore, like it just exists and all the athletes know the rules and all the race organizers know the rules and everyone shows up with the same expectations of one another. We're not doing guerrilla education anymore, because that's what it feels like.
Speaker 2:It feels like I'm doing guerrilla education where I'm literally grabbing athletes and saying, hey, when this happens post race, this is what you're allowed to do, yeah, well, hey, when this happens pre-race, this is what you're allowed to do. Like that is, you know, when I'm trying to just like get to athletes ahead of a testing experience that they've never been educated on, they've never seen before, etc. Like guerrilla education has been like taking 80% of my energy. It feels like and I'm really excited to hopefully like that goes away that there's like a pipeline that athletes say you know they find out. Oh hey, next year you're in the out of competition testing pool, you do this, they are provided with the education, they are onboarded, they there is no loopholes or oopsie daisies.
Speaker 2:It is like clear as day what is happening and that is just like it's a beautiful existence. No one thinks that it's weird to file whereabouts. No, races have their own special rules that preclude and saids or you know like I think. I guess races may continue to ban athletes indefinitely and that's their own prerogative, but that we've all agreed to this like common set of rules and decency and expectation, and it's just not a question. That is what we need to get to, and if that is a international governing body, amazing. But it might come about in slightly different forms to get us to that end goal, amazing but it might come about in slightly different forms to get us to that end goal.
Speaker 1:So one of the interesting parts of that is is this rule set that you are all agreeing to is being formulated by an expert entity, and that expert entity is the World Anti-Doping Association. That doesn't have to be the case, and there are many listeners out there that will say hey, listen, let's just come up with our own rule framework. Let's, as a community which exists.
Speaker 2:I've had those meetings.
Speaker 1:Yeah, let's, as a community, come up with our own framework and say these are the performance enhancing drugs, the purple pill, the red pill, the blue pill, xyz levels of testosterone or kind of whatever it is. Let's come up with our own set of rules and our own set of sanctions and enforce them ourselves. That is a plausible solution, right? A community-wide plausible solution. But what you're saying is no, no, no, no, no. We're just going to take the WADA code and their rule framework and I want to apply it into our sport. Why is that ladder distinction in your estimation really important, as opposed to the community trying to figure it out themselves?
Speaker 2:Well, those rules exist for a reason. I think people argue over very nitpicky supplements, et cetera, and any system, I guess, isn't perfect for sure. Like the burden of proof being on the athletes is hard to watch at times. And when I say burden of proof, proof, I mean you are guilty until proven innocent if something happens with your test samples, and it's just it's always kind of been that way with an anti-doping and that that's a hard pill to swallow. That means that guerrilla education is even more important. But I do think that I think it comes down to probably results management, and it's something that we've like kind of talked about, not here but in other other spaces, essentially like how are sanctions doled out, what does that look like, et cetera.
Speaker 2:I think some of the oopsie daisies in the sport of trail and ultra running are because we don't have like a proper results management system in place in the sport. Ie Athlete test positive in random road race that is reported to one federation, it's not reported to another federation, it's not within the adams system, which kind of allows us to know who's been tested, how often they're being tested in, what discipline they're being tested in, and then that athlete shows up to a race like sears and all, and we don't know that they're not technically supposed to be racing. They show up to ultra pyrenee you and run the marathon and we don't know they're not supposed to be racing, etc. It's like all of a sudden the the burden is on the athletes and the race organizers to know who has who's got a ban. He doesn't have a ban. If we're all under one universal system, then we're part of that system and that takes that burden off the competitors and off the race organizers to understand who's legally allowed to be on the start line or not.
Speaker 2:And I think that has been a big frustration. And there are people within the anti-doping working group at the PTA who that's what they really want to focus on is like a list of people who are currently or have served doping sanctions that we can draw from to say hey, like they're not supposed to be here, etc. And that seems like I don't want to have to do that. I draw from um to say hey, like they're not supposed to be here, etc. And that seems like I don't want to have to do that.
Speaker 2:I want wada to do that for me, I want a big global entity that has all that data information to do that for me. I don't want to have to source that. I don't want race organizers have to source that. I want it to be as easy as possible and I think that pre-existing system allows for these little menial things like education, like results management, like sanctions being upheld, the sharing of information, etc. The understanding of who's actually being tested, etc. To be done.
Speaker 2:It's not perfect because actually in Adams this is a tangent that's important In Adams there is no distinction for anyone racing over 3000 meters. In Adams there is no distinction for anyone racing over 3,000 meters. So there's not even a distinction between someone racing the 5k on the track and a road marathon, or the 3,000 meter steeplechase and a road half marathon, et cetera. They all fall under the 3,000 meter and up category. And so trail and ultra, if those athletes are being tested and there are some that we know are within a national testing pool we don't know that they're being tested or not because we can't delineate Trail and Ultra in the Atom system that already exists.
Speaker 2:So I do think us becoming part of that means something that we could push for, that we could actually maybe have someone listen to us, but that all exists within one established system that we are not currently a player in and some of our best solutions that I've had so many meetings this past year. That is what the ptr has been doing. We've been having meetings which is the bane of my existence and there are a number of players in the sport, including, like the international testing agency, which is the ita, who are these kind of wada adjacent potential systems and they're not a bad solution For the sport. We've talked about doing this within USADA, setting up a global testing pool, etc. It's not a bad solution, but it does mean that we're not getting full access to the things that we could have access to if we were completely WADA compliant and we were just part of a pre-existing international system which, with sport crossover, is going to become more and more important for trail and ultra running.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and I've kind of come at this ultimate WADA solution from the standpoint of, from the standpoint of, first off, that athletes, they just want to know the rules. And if you have a universal set of rules it's very clear. But when you have a fractured rule system, hey, these things are prohibited in this situation but they're not prohibited in this other situation. And you see that when athletes kind of migrate sports, so they have to go in and out of a national testing program and a national testing program, just they just want to know the rules, to be on the right side of the line, and the more those rules change. And now that I'm thinking about it, even when wada updates their list, you know they have a the. The new list comes out in october and then it takes effect. Is it october, august? I just went over this with tammy I forgot, takes effect.
Speaker 2:It takes effect in january of every year, but generally comes out in the fall and then jan 1 is like the new day. So, like tramadol, yeah, um was a big thing abused by the uci, road cyclist, etc. It has been abused in the sport of trail and ultra running as well, not gonna say it hasn't. Tramadol is a, is a is an opioid, it blunts your perceived exertion, etc. And that we found out in the fall that I'd be banned starting jan 1 of this year. So tramadol, can't use it, don't use it. You shouldn't have been using it to begin with. But that's kind of how that works, is that it's a constantly updated list?
Speaker 1:yeah, and I guess my my point with that is is, even when that list updates, there's still a moment of rejiggering amongst the athletes who you know none of them, not a lot, not all of them are doing are using these substances nefariously, but they still have to, like take survey the landscape. Okay, I will, I was doing this, I can't do it anymore. Now I'm not going to do it and I have to do kind of like something else. So my point with that that is, the more consistent the rules actually are, the better it is for the athletes, because all they want to do is just stay on the right side of the line. Listeners up a little bit. The reason we're talking about this is having a fully WADA compliant solution isn't the only solution out there, and it's probably not going to be the first one. There's probably going to be a couple of different steps in this whole trail building process that we're describing here, but another solution to it is why don't you just do your own thing, right? Why don't you just subcontract the testing and you come up with your own rules, framework and things like that, and to which I always go you want to have the experts involved in this, the people who have done it for a living, and have done it for decades for a living, that have the resources to say these are the banned substances because they run afoul of two of these three points that we went over with Tammy last week. And here's how we're going to implement everything.
Speaker 1:You don't want to go through that process with people who are naive or it's novel to them, because it's incredibly complicated. And I see this with races who want to adjudicate any sort of positive findings themselves, and that's a really common situation. A race will do competition testing and they'll work with the group that is doing that in competition testing, and sometimes it's USADA, sometimes it's another NATO and sometimes it's like a private group. Right, they have private companies that can do this, and the race organization will say give us the results. We want to figure out what to do with them, and to which I've always said just manage your race. You don't want to do that. You're not an expert in this. You don't want to. You don't want your nonprofit board or your race director or your volunteer director trying to figure out if this athlete has been using this substance nefariously or not.
Speaker 1:When those things happen, it can sometimes take a team, a literal team of people, all of which have decades of experience to figure out what is actually going on underneath the hood with those types of tests. That's the main reason I kind of come back to this you want to work to this gold standard solution because the expertise that you have to have in that area is so specific and developed over such a long period of time and also consequential to the ecosystem, to the athletes, the races, the integrity of the race and things like that. You don't want to screw it up by bringing in, you know, half-baked types of solutions in people who don't have the expertise to actually weed through the situation yeah, it's complicated, I would say, and then I mean just talk about like biases right, or being like, or perceived biases like well we're gonna we're gonna, you know, snag this athlete, but we're not gonna snag, you know, that athlete, etc.
Speaker 2:Exactly the sport. It's just like, okay, you don't get to selectively punish people either, and so I think that, yeah, it's. We do have some of that in place right now from experience, and tim tolofson is someone that I've been working kind of closely with. He's very passionate about this topic and I commend him for, like putting up the money to have in competition testing at Mammoth Trail Fest via USADA. He also made sure that USADA put on an educational program for athletes. It was open to anyone, but it was like mainly targeting the athletes who would be racing at the Golden Trail World Series so that they'd be, you know, if they had any questions etc. Sing at the golden trail world series so that they'd be, you know, if they had any questions etc. They could come to this educational zoom call ahead of time so that they just knew what they're getting into. Because that's the other thing too is that we don't want to test on uneducated athletes, which I harp on and people I think don't quite understand what that means like you want athletes to be educated, but we do right now. It kind of sort of came into effect at the UTMB World Series finals and country or regional majors this past year where UTMB the entity contracts with the International Testing Agency, which again is this like WADA adjacent situation. They're smart individuals but they come actually from like national governing body building and not from anti-doping, is my understanding having conversations with them, and then they contracted with national doping agencies in the countries, so like Spain, france, the US, etc. To do testing at those majors, as well as the French anti-doping agency at the UTMB World Series finals. But the goal of that whole thing and we knew some of this ahead of time was to actually have that information ahead of time to allow the education of athletes before testing at those events, which did not happen. And there were some pretty big oopsies that came out of that situation as well where unadjudicated athletes were tested by legitimate national anti-doping agencies, and so there are legitimate consequences to anything that was that ran afoul there.
Speaker 2:When, generally, when you bring in a new crop of athletes into any sort of anti-doping program, you have an onboarding period, you have an educational period and this is just with in competition testing. Like in competition testing should be the easiest form of anti-doping for us to like administer and get into the sport and do it well and smoothly and efficiently and with little mistakes. And that was not even the case. There were a bunch of mistakes that were made this year with that being instituted kind of rushed and without much foresight for the athletes. And this isn't to say like, oh, you want to give athletes time to like not get caught for doing something illicit. No, like it's like athletes just don't oftentimes like understand what they need to disclose, what they should be recording ahead of time, etc. So we had oopsies there and this is like the easiest anti-doping we can do.
Speaker 2:Because the end goal isn't just the easiest anti-doping we can do, because the end goal isn't just in competition, anti-doping. The end goal is having this wada legit, which I'm going to just keep saying what a legit, compliant out of competition testing like that is the end goal. The end goal isn't to have, you know, the athletes tested pre and post competition in chamonix or at the golden trail world series finals or whatever it's. To have you know random out of competition testing with a large athlete population and we can't even do the first step right, yeah, right now. And that, to me, is like scary and frustrating and not inspiring. It shows me how much we, how much we still I mean usada has gotten so many panicked emails from me about this over the last like year, about each of these incidents before they came up, um, and it's like to me that's scary, that we're like walking into something that we can't even do the easiest part right now.
Speaker 1:Whenever you plop a rule down, you have to make sure that you're doing it in a calculated and very deliberate way. So let's just remove doping from the thing, because it's such a charged topic and people get obscured by this wedge issue. Let's just say it's with your chart, running polls, right. So let's just say from one minute to the next UTMB. Or let's just say Western States right, it's a great example because they don't allow polls. Right. Let's just say Western States, three days before the race, says hey, you know what, we're going to allow polls. All of a sudden, right, big rule change from one day to the day to the next. That would throw the field into chaos and then you would start okay, do I have to keep the polls the entire time, like you have to do in Europe? Can I just use them up the escarpment? Like? You would go through this entire thing and nobody would get. You know, probably nobody would get mad at it, but it would be such a disruption because you go from not thinking that it's part of the rule set to thinking that it's part of the rule set. Nobody's going to disqualify you for not using polls. But now let's flip that situation into an anti-doping one, right, you don't know that you're being tested and all of a sudden you are being tested, right.
Speaker 1:There's consequence to failing the test and sometimes a severe consequence to people's career and their livelihood and also their reputational damage and things like that. And so I kind of come back to reemphasize your point, corinne. You have to do things very in a cautious and a calculated way so that everybody understands what the deal is, because there is actual consequence to it. It's not like not taking polls when you're allowed to take polls in a race, even though that would be just as confusing to everybody, just as confusing to everybody. So for the listeners out there and I get this a lot in the community why do you have to take? Why can't you just test for the heavy hitting drugs? Why can't you just do this? Why can't you just do that? Right Is usually the framework that the question is coming. You just do this like it's so easy. The reason it's not so easy is because it's such a disruptive rule change in the entire kind of set of rules that the athletes have to have to play by.
Speaker 1:So you've got your end point, corinne. You're, you know. Corinne gets to play queen of the world and wave her magic wand and poof, we're right there. Let's like rewind, right. Let's start kind of like building these trails. This is almost like a product roadmap, right. That's start kind of like building these trails. This is almost like a product roadmap right, that you can kind of create for yourself. What's the? We went over the kind of the current state of affairs. Right, we've kind of batted around. Some races are using in competition testing, the AFLD is gradually co-opting some trail and ultra runners into an out of competition testing pool. There's still no universal system to thread all of these happenings together. In your estimation, where are the kind of the first two pivotal points that we now need to take to start to build this trail or this bridge to your ultimate, you know, vision that you articulated earlier?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think that I mean what it is starting, as is a million meetings. I keep harping on these meetings, but it's been the thing. It's like I've we've had to talk to everyone. But if you know and this includes, you know, like the athlete integrity unit and world athletics people who are players in kind of in the running space but not necessarily in the trail space, and as they're kind of all looking at trail right now, like hey, we see you over there, we might come talk to you later.
Speaker 2:Some of that has been hampered by the Paris Olympics coming up. A lot of the focus needs to be on Paris and making sure that goes smoothly, and then they're like post-Paris, we'll come back to you. So I do think that there's like some outside interest in trail and ultra running from the folks at, like, world Athletics, who will become the presenter for the this here's another big acronym for you the World Trail and Mountain Running Championships, which is too long of an acronym. They will become the presenting sponsor in 2025 when that next world championship is. So I think that there is some kind of outside influence that could come in that could allow a better pathway forward.
Speaker 2:But the iterations we've talked about includes working with one national anti-doping agency like USADA, and creating a, you know, a global, you know, beyond a national pool of athletes to run an out-of-competition testing system, for which could work, and there are, and that would be, you know, like a out of competition testing system, for which could work, and there are, and that would be what you know like a water legit testing system. They would do results management. They would, you know, kind of take it from start to finish. That would include education on the front end, etc. But I don't want to say it's prohibitively expensive because, like, I think that we could raise the money to do it what is that that?
Speaker 2:It's about half a million dollars a year to test less than 40 athletes, generally speaking, and we've talked about you know, could we stretch that money by like having some athletes that we test more and some athletes that we test less, and then what's the legitimacy of like athletes not being tested but being part of the system, et cetera, from like a trust building and like a practical standpoint of the system, etc. From like a trust building and like a practical standpoint. But it's about a half million dollars a year and that includes the testing, but it also includes all the legal. It's kind of like a big legal bank essentially of making sure that if something happened with someone's sample, that there would be like funding for kind of legal ramifications, but also kind of like the athlete working through this legal their own legal burden in that regard.
Speaker 1:But what I want to Before yeah, before, I don't want to I want this half a million dollars, because I know this has kind of been thrown around a little bit. I want to put this into context and the context I'm going to skip to the end and then I'm going to talk about how we get to the end. Yeah, a half a million bucks is not a whole lot of money when you think about the entire ecosystem that could contribute to that. That's the end point. It's not that much. Sure, you're talking about 40 athletes. You double that. It's not quite a double in the expenses, but it's still going to go up.
Speaker 1:When you look at that in the context of the size of Hoka which this is public information, I'm not saying anything that's like behind a curtain or whatever. They report their revenue quarterly. They're a billion-dollar company, billion with a B, just one shoe brand Hoka. $1 billion in revenue last year, over $1 billion in revenue last year. You look at the sponsorship money that a lot of the big races draw, in particular UTMB, which exceeds over a million dollars to those sponsors every single year. Once again, I'm putting it in a bread box. It's not difficult information to back of the napkin type of calculate.
Speaker 1:So if the people out there the athletes and the coaches and the brands and the race directors out there think that cost is somehow prohibiting this to happen, I got news for you. Cost is not an issue. There's enough economy in the entire ecosystem of trail and ultra running to actually fund this. There's no doubt that's the case. Now, is it easy?
Speaker 1:No, it's not easy, because you have to pull that funding in from different entities. There's not going to be an angel investor that will come in to do that and I don't think USADA would actually allow that, because they want to thread those resources to make sure that they're not getting or they couldn't be accused of bias or whoever does the actual testing. But my point with that is not to belabor it too much is don't think half a million bucks is a lot. We're big enough, we're grown adults. We're big boys now. Big boys and big girls now. That is something that should be attainable, or the cost of it? The price tag of it should be actually attainable by the entire of it. The the price tag of it should be actually attainable by the entire community if we all put our heads together and figure it out yeah.
Speaker 2:So, as you mentioned, like, cost is not the limiting factor. I don't think it is, but what happens then is that you need someone to kind of and this once again creates that like, uh, removal bias from, like an anti-doping group like usada is that you need someone to hold the purse strings, like you need an entity, yeah, to hold the purse strings, and that comes in different flavors as well. One of those is, like you have a signatory right, so you have an international testing, even international federation or a group, or it can be a major race essentially, like utmb could become a signatory essentially, which might have other issues, but essentially it needs to be a federation, a, a major race organization or, a quote, another group that is highly relevant to the sport which is very ambiguous, but technically that is one of the signatory options.
Speaker 2:Signatories means that that you know you are, that really brings you into, like the WADA, the WADA legit, the WADA compliant circle. That is like full, you are fully in, et cetera. We could have something that's less legit than that, that acts as the purse strings, that acts as an entity that's partnering with a USADA. That being said, they could also partner with someone like a private entity, like the ITA, or a North American iteration of that. I've spoken to some of our kind of mutual friends and colleagues who could be basically the North American version of the ITA and probably have the better resources, better understanding of antidoping to actually do that. But the issue there is that unless then you have to have a global signatory if you want access to atoms, if you want access to better results, management, etc. So there's these two distinct pathways A signatory could or, I guess, could be involved or could not be involved, but you have to have an entity. And I do think that this point in my mind, that entity, is probably the biggest pinch point, because the ptra, like we, can't be. We are a relevant organization but we can't be the entity either. We're an organization run by the athletes who are actively competing in the sport. That is kind of part of our ethos that you you are and you are a sponsored, a currently sponsored athlete with like a grace period to come out of that. And then retired athletes can be part of the general assembly but they don't have a voting share within the voting assembly, like within the general assembly. So it's like you can be involved but you're not, you don't have a vote, etc. So the PTA really can't be that relevant entity either. When I'm like when I put my pleas out there into the ether to be like I need someone to help with this, there's actually interest in help, like to help with anti-doping I'm using air quotes again because we don't really know what that means and it's like there are people that are passionate about anti-doping and, you know, maybe have they're a pharmacist or they have some other expertise that they could offer to the athletes as far as like education et cetera. But this like entity item, be it for a USADA based or a WADA compliant system or us doing it, the private route of recreating an antidoping framework with another organization, to reinvent the wheel but to do it outside of the system, the money is the same, the cost is going to be the same, but that entity, signatory or otherwise, is really same. The the cost is going to be the same, but that entity, signatory or otherwise, is really up in the air.
Speaker 2:And that is the thing that I don't know how to fix. And it's like I feel like I've already, I feel like the things that I do outside of my own running has already been a detriment to my own running. And that's fine, like I'm, these are things I'm like that I want to be involved in, but it's like it turns out I'm not just running and I use a lot of my brain, energy and physical energy to try to solve these other problems in our sport, and it's like I still keep coming up against this, like I think I texted you coop and I was like so are we just both retiring from everything? And like becoming the entity to fix this thing, because I don't know who else is going to do it. I don't know how to make this thing happen and that is like this pinch point is the signatory element, slash the entity, slash the person holding the purse.
Speaker 1:Essentially, I want you to elaborate on one point. So why? Because the listeners are going to think this and I have a little bit of curiosity as well why can't the ptra be that entity? Or why can't somebody something that already exists, the utmb world series, right, something that already exists why can't they be that entity to do all of these things? And just to kind of like recap why this entity is important they're the ones that hold the purse strings, so they're in charge of gathering the money and then also deploying the money.
Speaker 1:You have to have some group of people or some entity, as you're saying, in the middle of that entire process, because you don't want a single person funding it. Corinne all of a sudden comes up with half a million bucks and you give it to USADA to deploy that. You don't want that to happen. You want some sort of mixing of everything to avoid potential conflicts of interest and bias and things like that. But you also need an entity to help direct the testing agencies towards who the pool is right. So there's a pool of athletes and it's not everybody right.
Speaker 1:You mentioned 40, could be 50, could be a hundred, but it's a fixed number. It's not the whole field where. How do you help direct those finite resources, being the doping control officers, the tests themselves and all of those things? How do you efficiently direct those at the athletes and the competitions that need the most, the most scrutiny? Theoretically, this entity would be heavily involved, if not solely direct that component of it. Why can't it be something that already exists? Why can't somebody raise their hand, the PTR raise their hand, or the Western States Board of Directors raise their hand and say we will do this for you, community. Here we're going to lie on this sacrificial altar to take over this responsibility. Why can't that be the case, or can it?
Speaker 2:Yeah, just a bunch of martyrs out there.
Speaker 1:You know I don't want that job, by the way, I'm not volunteering.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I've tried. I've tried to have Coop volunteer as tribute several times and he's not on board. It's okay, we'll get him eventually, team, don't worry. I think that so a number of things. So technically, the utmb world series could become a signatory. I've talked to the ita about it. It's something that would be largely paperwork probably, and not necessarily impact the sport widely. When I say not, I mean like technically speaking, it doesn't give UTMB more control over the sport if they became the signatory. But I think from because it's mostly paperwork, but I think from like a cultural relevance standpoint, you'd want an independent arm running that. If they became the signatory, you wouldn't want it to be I mean, I just had a meeting with Catherine Pelletti yesterday the signatory you wouldn't want it to be. I mean I just had a meeting with Catherine Pelletti yesterday. I don't think you want Catherine Pelletti running that arm of it.
Speaker 2:If UTMB is the signatory, I think you want an independent entity running it. Same with the PTRA, right? You're talking about how you know they do. That entity needs to be able to say hey, this is how we're directing testing, this is where X, y and Z. We want to look more this direction. We want the funding to go here, etc.
Speaker 2:A group run by the athletes already kind of takes out that independence of it. I think it needs to be a step removed from there. Do I think athletes former athletes could be on that board? Do I think that you could have an athlete representative working with that group? Yes, we see that within lots of national governing bodies, right, you have an athlete representative on the board for various functions. So it's not to say that athletes wouldn't be involved in like entirely, but I think that it needs to be more independent than that.
Speaker 2:Technically speaking, like you know, I was like oh, we need an international entity. What is this thing called the International Trail Running Association or ITRA, you know? Could they in theory be that global entity? And so I think that there is likely an entity that already exists that might need relevance restored. But I think essentially, even if, say, like, itra became the thing with the hand up, you would essentially need to create a organization within the organization to you're basically not to say that you're using them as a front, but you'd be using it as a front, yeah, to be the entity that holds the purse strings for this internal kind of hidden, in plain sight, uh group of people that'd be responsible for that kind of thing within itra. Like I don't think you can just hand it over to anyone, right?
Speaker 1:now, yeah, it's a weird situation because you have to have it. We're using the word entity or group of people, a company, whatever, that is simultaneously a stakeholder and independent, and those have a big overlap to them, right? They come into conflict, right, this independence aspect and the stakeholder aspect. As you can imagine, let's just say it's Corrine and Coop, right, that formed this entity. You will absolutely have people say, well, freaking, coop's not going to. This is why I can't do it. Right, coop is not going to direct more testing at his athletes because he doesn't want the scrutiny on his athletes. That's an absolute, valid criticism that would be thrown out. And any stakeholder in the community is going to have a similar level of scrutiny on them if they form this type of entity. So this concept of you need to be a stakeholder in it and also independent is one of the bigger stumbling blocks, because the last thing that you want in any anti-doping, in any anti-doping whatever, is this perception that there's a conflict of interest, because that deteriorates the trust. For you know everything, for everything that you're trying, for everything that you're trying to do. So Corinne has heard me tell this story many times before, but I'll go ahead and tell it publicly to the audience as well, because it's now several years removed.
Speaker 1:One of the former COOs of USADA I happened to work with for a long period of time His name is John Frothingham and he's absolutely brilliant and I asked him very directly while he was COO of USADA I was like, what is going to happen with trail and ultra running in this space? How do you actually fix this whole problem? And he brought up this concept of creating an entity as the instantaneity like it didn't take him more than five seconds to figure it out as the instant stumbling block in the road. He said that somebody is going to have to form a company, form an entity that is rife with a lot of criticism, that probably doesn't pay very well and maybe 10 years down the line does something good. Not a lot of people are going to want to do that, right. Not a lot of people will raise their hand and say I am going to take charge and I'm going to act and I'm going to actually do that Now.
Speaker 1:It doesn't have to actually get formed in that kind of in that way, but here you have somebody who's a legitimate domain, expert in the in in the field, instantly identifying what is going to be the main roadblock and that identification is so very easy because you already look at what the like, how it works, in an established system where the national governing bodies, they basically do everything they. This is the pool. These are the groups of athletes we're going to direct. You know, the testing we're going to help system where the national governing bodies, they basically do everything. This is the pool. These are the groups of athletes we're going to help direct the testing over here.
Speaker 1:We're going to work with the NATOs to do this and educate the athletes on creating this independent, yet stakeholder company or entity within trail and ultra running isn't so easy because it's not kind of mandated by the Olympic system. Right, the Olympicic system, you have to have those things. So if we're presenting that like what, like it's, somebody's got to write right, I mean current, somebody's just got to raise their hand and do it at the end of the day, right?
Speaker 2:yeah, which is like maybe the world's worst job, but yeah I don't want to do it.
Speaker 1:I can't. Once again, I'd have to give up my coaching career to do that, because there's too much conflict and there's many people and this is what I've been struggling with and I'm sure the PTA is struggling with as well there are many people that would actually want to do it but are either not in the right life situation or they have too much of that conflict to actually do it. Just imagine some C-level person at HOKA or whoever else can be in the community, them actually booting it up and doing it to boot up an LLC or a company or whatever is not that hard. But once you think through what you're actually having to do, manage all of these career impacting, integrity impacting things it's a heavy decision to make. It's a heavy decision for anybody to make if you're actually thinking about it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and it's like I've looked for all the shortcuts and loopholes and other pathways but, I keep coming up against this thing, this the need for an entity which feels I don't know kind of nebulous in and of itself, but yeah, this idea of it being stakeholder, yet independent. And and how can you do that if you are also, you know, a controlling force in a race series? And I think that I mean, I look at that, right, like you've got. I look at cycling, so you've got like the UCI, which is like their national governing body, so then they have kind of this like independent lens into WADA, then they sanction all the you know any other race in the sport. They want to be UCI affiliated, etc. And we just we don't have that and I don't know that we ever will have that.
Speaker 2:You know, so to speak, like have like everything be, you know, okay, like here's a potential possibility. Right, right, utmb becomes not just you know, ultra, trail, mont blanc, but they are more than just a race series. All of a sudden they'd have to be this national or international governing body and I think that's kind of. We're at this weird, I don't know pinch point in the sport in general where no one is sure where they want us to be. Right, world athletics isn't sure they want us to be. Each individual national track and field organization isn't sure they want us to be. Right, world athletics isn't sure they want us to be. Each individual national track and field organization isn't sure where they want us to be.
Speaker 2:Some countries you know spain is a great example of that like I think you know, they have adopted trail and ultra really into their national governing body and therefore do some testing. Some trail and trail and ultra athletes will become part of, like, their track and field testing pool. Because of that, france is also kind of doing some of this. But it's like we're in this weird no one knows where they want trail and ultra to be. No national governing body knows where they want us to be. No international governing body knows where we're to be. We're kind of this stepchild sport where we are rapidly professionalizing but at the same time we're still other, we're still outside, we're still this niche thing that they don't think they have to pay attention to yet, and so maybe this will change wide, like just wildly, in the next 18 months to two years.
Speaker 1:I mean, that's the that's what I was going to ask you Is it plausible that some the IOC or world athletics or something that actually currently exists just co-ops the entire community of trail and ultra running as a kind of an Olympic level sport, so to speak, and then that way all the framework is kind of like already there, it's like a new, it'd be in the Olympics, right, Like instead of the 3000 meter steeplechase you have the 3000 meter steeplechase and a 50K and then all the athletes kind of fit underneath that umbrella. Would that be a reasonable, like plausible scenario to actually play out? Because then it's just time, you just have to wait, right, you have to have patchwork solutions and kind of in you know, in the meantime, do you just wait it out? Can the community just wait it out?
Speaker 2:in theory, yes, and I think that might be what our patchwork is leading to. And I actually had a conversation with some of the kind of the private stakeholders about this idea that, like you know, we started an out of competition testing pool. Could this just be rolled into something that's like encapsulated within, like a world athletic situation down the road and they were like, yeah, of course it would just like be handed off, um, so to speak, but and I don't think that's impossible I think that truly we've had kind of mixed messages from world athletics, which again is kind of you know, they are the, the entity over, they're the overlords of, of trail, of soon to be trail, of track and field of road, et cetera.
Speaker 2:They're kind of the the grandparent organization that everything else falls underneath. We've gotten mixed messages from them. We've been told, on one hand, that they have no interest in, they don't think that there's a reason to test trail and ultra running athletes. We've asked about this like hey, could we bring in a group of athletes under under world athletics, have this subsidized, to have you do results management, etc. And they're like we don't think that there's a reason to test trail and ultra athletes. We don't think that antidote. They were basically like you're low risk, why would we test you? Why would we have money in it? But at the same time, they will be the overarching entity for the World Mountain and Trail running championships in 2025 in the Pyrenees. So it's like there's this mixed message of like we don't need to test you guys, you're low risk.
Speaker 2:We don't think endodoping is taking place here, which is being contradicted by accidental stuff and like and illicit, like intentional doping that's going on in our sport Plus you know this like pathway to being our world championships.
Speaker 2:So we might have this thing coalescing right where we've had you know, we've had this segmented thing. We've had the world mountain running association. We've had the iau, we've had the you know, itra, affiliated things, and all of a sudden we're coalescing around this one world championship event that now world athletics is going to be heavily invested in, supposedly, it seems like, by talking to like nancy and folks at the american trail running association that really does going to be heavily invested in, supposedly, it seems like, by talking to like nancy and folks at the american trail running association, that really does seem to be the pathway that is starting to unfurl in front of us. And if that does happen, I think we do all of a sudden have a pathway to being included in a pre-existing system that we might have to be investing in. It might be a subsidized system, but then it would automatically bring us into their resources, their results, management, their access to atoms, having a signatory, etc. That we could all just be adopted by.
Speaker 1:And that to me, feels like a like, like I'm exhaling like this big sigh of relief, potentially, but I don't know how we feel about waiting it out and seeing either yeah, that's the thing, because you're not controlling your own destiny at that point right, you're just like waiting for this random not not completely random, but a third party to just decide hey, y'all are worth it. This is kind of like what we're going to do and once again kind of going back to're going to do, and once again kind of going back to this entity that has to be both the stakeholder and also have some neutrality and independence associated with it. It's hard to come up with that Goldilocks entity, but the more and more I think about it as listeners can tell like current of I and I've like wrestled with this internally in our brains and then also like verbally, whenever we, you know, whenever we're in the same, you know in the same place at the same time, or even in a virtual room together, and it's the. The answers are not very clear cut and that's what I'm trying to articulate here in the community. But I've always kind of come back to like we want to do it ourselves, like we being the community, and I hate to be like projected as like the universal spokesperson for the community. I'm certainly not, but I think that's a reasonable position to kind of like take the bull by the horns, at least as a stepping stone, either in advance or in conjunction with these, aren't like either.
Speaker 1:Or situations, some aspect of trail and ultra running becoming an Olympic sport, having our own carving out, our own destiny within the sport itself, so that we know that the integrity of the results that we see across the landscape has been ensured and that also the athletes kind of know, kind of know what the deal is. I kind of don't want to wait for another thing to just kind of miraculously pop up. I kind of want to just like let's figure out who's actually gonna do this and create the end to create. I feel like what's the most recent mission Impossible movie that the bad guy is the entity? Right, it's like an AI thing that takes over the Russian submarine. Feeling like I'm teleported back to that movie when we talk about this.
Speaker 1:But anyway, let's go over one additional thing, right. I mean we've kind of beaten this dead horse that creating this organization is kind of the biggest stumbling block here. If we just remove that, right, it's just once again Corinne can play queen of the world again, waver magic wand and say, poof, this thing now actually exists. What's the next piece of it? Right, because it's not just an organization like plops out of nowhere. That's a big ask in and of itself, but after that organization exists, I want you to like walk through, walk the listeners through what the next kind of steps would be, so that everybody is on the same page. Right, you have this organization that can collected your half a million bucks. They're going to start to deploy it, and things like that. What would the next steps actually look like to the observing public and then also to the athletes that are involved?
Speaker 2:I just double checked that the triathlon world did not already steal our potential hypothetical acronym for a international governing body we could be the uti american listeners we can't do that.
Speaker 1:The.
Speaker 2:Union Trail International, like the UCI for cycling.
Speaker 1:We can't use that acronym.
Speaker 2:No, that's a free idea for someone out there who wants to run with it. No, I see this as a future.
Speaker 1:We can't use that acronym.
Speaker 2:It's going to be great. Okay, so I'm waving my magic wand. This has happened. The UTI exists. We've given them all of our money. You know, world athletics is over there, continuing to feign interest in us. It's great, we're carving our own path forward.
Speaker 2:What that would look like right would be establishing an, a global testing pool, which is also hard because we have many disciplines right. We've got this like sub ultra trail space. We've got this kind of. We've got 50k specialists. We've got 100 mile specialists. We've got, you know, are we testing the 250 mile, the tour de jean specialists, etc. Who is in this testing pool? Are we using a ranking system saying, hey, you ranked within the top 30 men this year and that is distance agnostic. We've figured out a way to make it completely distance agnostic. You're in the testing pool.
Speaker 2:We could, at this point, also be benefited by the investment from other national organizations. Ie, france already has already is testing these five men and these five women cool. They also then are then like, included in that testing pool. So there there could be this spread or advancement of one unified out of competition testing pool by investment from different national organizations, and I honestly think thatcompetition testing pool by investment from different national organizations and I honestly think that having a global testing pool run by a private entity would encourage the investment from other national antidoping agencies and national governing bodies to want to contribute.
Speaker 2:I would say to have some, like they're already. They're saying, hey, you missed two of our athletes, so we're also going to test these two or these three, kind of casting an even wider net. But essentially, from there those athletes are onboarded, they're educated annually. That list of who is in and out of competition would adjust annually, kind of based on previous testing or previous results from the year before. But it would need to be, I think, like a distance agnostic ranking system in which we could best disseminate. You know our Remy Bonet is in the testing pool and you know Jim Walmsley is in the testing pool. Right, working in completely opposite ends of the sport is really important.
Speaker 1:That's not easy either, because usually you have like 25% of the entirety of the people that you're looking at that are very clearly need to be in the pool. And then you have 50%, that middle, you know, kind of that middle half. That sounds really weird to say, but the math actually works out. If you have the top 25%, that's easy. The middle 50%, which is half. 50% is half hashtag math. That gets a little bit of debate who should be in the pool and who shouldn't be in the pool. But then the last 25%, that's kind of where most of the consternation actually occurs, if you can imagine just think about the ultra runner of the year rankings, right, usually it's very clear one, two, three maybe there's a little bit of debate here four, five, six, there's more debate. And then once you get to seven, eight, nine, 10, that's when everybody's like trying to compare apples and oranges and bananas and cucumbers together and try to come up with some sort of thing.
Speaker 1:The same thing is the same exact thing plays out in creating the testing pool. You have to have a group of domain experts that spend countless hours figuring out. We are only going to put these four. However big it is, 40 people will use that number. We'll put these 40 people in a box and we're going to test them and then we're going to evaluate it. This person drops out, this person comes back in. That's not who like. Who's to determine? You know, corinne gets tested and coop does it, or vice versa, right? I mean, that's a difficult problem, but you're saying that's the first step. Right is creating the pool that somehow takes into account all of the different distances, what's going to apply, what's not going to apply. Got that pool we've got set, and then we start deploying the testing from there yeah, and there's.
Speaker 2:And, to play on that comparison analogy, there's always going to be a potato, there's always going to be a potato who thinks they could be in the testing pool, but they're not for this year, and that's just the way it goes why can't hold on?
Speaker 1:this is important. Why can't an athlete just raise their hand and say put me in the pool, I'll pay for it? Because athletes have asked that of usada quite often. Right, put me in the testing pool, I'll pay for it. Because athletes have asked that of USADA quite often. Right, Put me in the testing pool, I'll pay for it. Whatever it costs five grand a year. Whatever it is, I'll pay for it. Put me in the testing pool. Why can't athletes do that? Why does it have to be a pool that's created by an external group of advisors?
Speaker 2:Well, man, I feel like this is a test that I am unprepared for. I have to imagine, though, there's a bias and resources component to that. In part, it's just it's not just because of the testing costing X amount of money, but it's the results management piece, and results management seems kind of like this weird nebulous term that we keep using, but essentially it's like it's the legal ramifications of like of a positive test essentially, and that is not really included in that. Hey, I'll give you 5K and be put in this testing pool. So I think that there's probably a bias element of wanting to be in the testing pool and saying, hey look, I'm in the testing pool, I gave them my money, I'm in the testing pool, versus being selected and elected to be in that testing pool.
Speaker 2:You could also do things like we see this in a lot of Olympic qualification circles, in which this kind of like expands the pool further. If an athlete and this would fall probably on the national governing bodies, not the international entity or organization is that if you have an athlete that is eligible for potentially making the world's team for an Olympic, for the Olympics example, that athlete is required to have been in the out of competition testing pool for one year prior to that championship event. Therefore, that would fall to the national governing body. So the national governing body, we call it the short list, oftentimes in, or like long list, short list for olympic trials, a lot of sports that don't run a truck like a track and field trial system, but run a like hey how we use how the us does Worlds right.
Speaker 2:There are some qualifying events, but there's also this like apply on resume. So essentially eligible athletes then need to be on what is deemed the short list or the long list, however you want to look at it cup, half, full cup and those athletes have to be tested out of competition by the national organization for a year prior to Worlds if they are eligible to be on that Worlds team. So that'd be one way to kind of expand that scope beyond the like these people performed in the X percent, y percent, z percent of the field over the previous year. But yeah, there's no reason beyond that why someone can't raise their hand and just get put into a testing pool.
Speaker 1:Well, I know athletes will ask that, and it's something that USADA in particular has always denied, and it's because of that potential bias or conflicts of interest. They don't want to receive the money directly from the athletes. They'd rather fuse the money together so that any potential linkage between this person paid you X to do this and you influencing the outcome of whatever the testing actually is. You want to avoid that at all costs, because your business you saw it as business and all the NATOs are the same way are essentially built off of integrity, and anything that pierces that veil of integrity and one of these things would be receiving money directly from the people that you are actually testing is very clearly not going to be something that they come up into. Let's wrap this up a little bit, corinne, because we've kind of gone back and forth. I think it's very, I hope, the message that we've kind of painted to the public and this runs in line with my previous conversation that the listeners can refer back to with Tammy Hanson over at USADA and I imagine even though I haven't recorded this yet a conversation that I'm going to have next week with Gabe Bida that the arena is complicated. It's not as simple as peeing in a cup and it turns red or green and then we report the red or green to whoever else. There's a lot of different pieces of the puzzle. To whoever else. There's a lot of different pieces of the puzzle.
Speaker 1:The other storyline here is that there is going to continue to be fractured elements of this before a cohesive solution is formed. And what I mean by that is we're going to have various entities to use that word races perform in competition testing. We're going to have NATOs kind of come into the fray, as is already kind of happening with certain country and certain countries and things like that. And those are all positives. They might be tricky and they might have different stumbling blocks.
Speaker 1:Even the quartz debacle that we went through, I view that as a net positive because it got everybody's attention. I do view these initial stumbling blocks as positives because you got to move the needle, and it's never going to be perfect, but you got to keep moving the needle Within that fractured element. Corinne, the stakeholders here are the athletes, the coaches, the brands and the race directors primarily. You could say that the casual fan is a little bit of a stakeholder as well. But within those four stakeholder groups of people, how can they get more involved to help perpetuate this fractured nature or this kind of like fractured system that we currently have and then eventually lead into something to where it's more cohesive? What can they actually do?
Speaker 2:Yeah. So I would say that the first thing is to like be ready to serve when called upon. That's kind of like the overarching thing, right.
Speaker 1:When we say jump, I want you to jump enthusiastically.
Speaker 2:Enthusiastic consent from everyone would be amazing. But I think the big piece is that, like what we can do and what I'm finding that needs to be done with the PTRA in particular. Like we've mentioned Tammy a few times, where I've got, I've been in communication with Tammy about doing some education with the PTRA members open to athletes, etc. So when it comes to athlete brand, race director, etc. Buy-in, I think that agreeing to WADA level, like WADA compliance, just like let's just say that even if we don't have testing at a race, at an event, et cetera, let's just agree that those are the rules that we're following.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Straightforward. You can use the global draw, you can find those. Those resources are amazing and they're already online. We don't need to reinvent them. And then it's like host education, host education for your athletes.
Speaker 2:Make education mandatory for your athletes, because the best way you can protect the athlete, the brand, the sport is to make sure that people know the rules they're following and then expect them to adhere to them is how I would look at it, and that is what I think our biggest focus will be largely targeted at in competition testing for the next year probably, as we maybe move towards out of competition testing is to really make sure that events are educated, because I think it's not just the athletes need to be educated. The events and the stakeholders within those race organizers, organizations, also need to be educated on to the reality of anti-doping, on to the reality of anti-doping, onto the implications of anti-doping, onto the you know, making sure that things are run appropriately, that we're investing in things appropriately, et cetera. It's not just the athletes and brands that need to be educated, but I think the race directors as well. But that's the biggest thing that I see is coming down the pipeline. It's the lowest, it's the lowest hanging fruit, I guess.
Speaker 1:I don't think people realize how easy it is, like I went over this with Tammy last week. I know you haven't heard this podcast, corinne, but you can kind of envision how it actually worked out. I don't think people realize how easy it is. I just I happen to have her email and contact information, so that's like one step. But I just emailed Tammy and I said will you do an in-service for my athletes the period? It was the easiest thing ever. She said yes, I paid them for it. It was not that, it was not that expensive. But these initial steps. I guess the point that I'm trying to drive home is these initial steps that you're talking about with race directors and brands and athletes. They are not that hard, they're low hanging fruit. Yeah, it might cost a few hundred bucks to get this done, but that is not anything in the grand scope of things and there's no excuse not to do that.
Speaker 1:I'm going to step up on the soapbox for just a second. I view my role as a coach, particularly for the elite and professional athletes, to help them perpetuate their profession, and part of that is making sure that they're educated on what the rule set is. How could they could potentially run a foul off on it when they're not even trying. I view that as like an active role that I play. It's not just putting freaking workouts down on paper and telling them you know, good job, karan. It's like, hey, listen, this is part of the stuff that you actually need to know. So I would encourage anybody out there that is in one of these invested stakeholders take five minutes and figure out what you can actually do just to get educated. Just start there. Just start there. If everybody's on the same page, we all know what the thing is. Then we can start to have a conversation about how to move things forward. So your point there, corinne, is just really well taken that the first step is some of these easy education steps.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think it's easy to get lost in other things that people want you know, like a list of actively serving individuals, who are serving bands, etc. But I think it's really like protect yourself, protect your athletes, protect the sport by being well educated and well versed in what antidoping looks like. It's not that hard to do. I think that you know it's kind of us signing on to a common code. That shouldn't be a big hurdle because it shouldn't be me, you know, one-on-one grabbing athletes ahead of no, you know, that's not sustainable it's not.
Speaker 2:No, it's not sustainable at all. And I feel like that's the instagram dms that I'm sending out, that's the free race, me walking into a room being like hey, this is happening, like know that this is your right, etc. Which has been fine because I think that it's important that those athletes know that this is your right, etc. Which has been fine, because I think that it's important that the athletes know that they can have a chaperone post-race, that they need to be writing down the lot numbers of the supplement or medication that they're taking, etc. They know what the global draw is and how to use it effectively. These are simple things, but it turns out that these simple things can add up in really profound ways.
Speaker 2:It's not my job to catch the dopers. It's my job to educate my colleagues, which turns out my colleagues are wide-reaching at this point. It's the athletes, my teammates, that I'm coaching, the race organizers that we work with, the brands that we work with, etc. It's kind of that's. I don't know that's the job. The job is like making sure that we all have a common understanding of that's. I don't know that's the job. The job is like making sure that we all have a common understanding of what is and isn't acceptable from a not just a protection of the athlete standpoint, but a wider protection of the sport standpoint yep, start with the easy stuff, education first, and then the entity will form.
Speaker 1:I'm gonna use that voice every time we say it. Now the entity like some, like big, dark, nebulous, nebulous the uti. It's happening we can't use uti corinne I think we can. I think it's funny no, we cannot use that we'll brainstorm it.
Speaker 2:We'll brainstorm it at a later date, exactly well for what it's worth.
Speaker 1:I hope that this problem gets solved. I mean, we've recognized this and I hope, by putting this podcast and this information kind of out in the public, I do hope that on the back end of it something kind of forms together. You and I have been, you know, outside looking in participants. We're not in the best position to remove that stumbling block. Like you said, we're not in the position of trying to catch the dopers right. That's not our lot in life. It's would potentially create a conflict of interest and things like that.
Speaker 1:But there are people out there and hopefully they're listening to this that are in the right position in their life and actually want to take something like this on. I for what it's worth. I have approached individuals, you know, just to put this out there publicly. I've approached individuals about being the person or creating a group that actually solves that problem. It's a hard sell.
Speaker 1:So I hope that the listeners take this to heart that if the job's out there, if you want to do it you know it's not nobody You're not going to apply for it on monstercom or whatever there's job, linkedin or whatever the job board is, but the but the job is absolutely out there and you'll have people in your corner that want that, wants you to do it, but nobody's going to force anybody to do it. That's the thing. So I hope, by putting this content on the space, that that at least perks that, that at the very least it perks people's interest. Second thing is the athletes, particularly elite athletes, and the coaches and the brands that also have purvey over these elite athletes, take this education piece seriously. And the final step is maybe there's some solution that's catalyzed to remove the stumbling block.
Speaker 2:Yeah, there'll be people to advise you. There'll be people to support you along the way. If this is your calling, if you're a retired stakeholder and you have ample time stakeholder, you're right, it's a retired stakeholder right, like you're retired early because you, like, did something cool, um, and you've got some extra time on your hands and you want to be feared and maybe loathed, but also championed. This could be a job for you. I'm selling it, I think there you go.
Speaker 1:We sold it good. Corinne I, I have to say thank you for doing what you do with the ptra. Thank you for being a colleague and a friend in this. I know it hasn't been easy, or you know gorilla, educating people, as you're mentioning, that's not an easy thing to do, nor does nor is it sustainable.
Speaker 1:I recognize that from your perspective, you're playing whack-a-mole, but it is appreciated by the community. It's appreciated by people like me, because any of the messages that I try to drive home are just reinforced because you and I are serendipitously on the same page in many, if not all, of these aspects. So I just want to tell you on behalf of the community just thank you for what you do. Nobody twisted your arm to take any of the roles that you're taking being an advocate in this area. You decided on your own accord to do that. That's something very admirable, because you're one of the few people that is actually taking action no-transcript it and I think that you should be commended for it. And I just want to do that publicly, before we went off air.
Speaker 2:Thanks, it's always good. I will wake up early for you to pat me on the back, any day.
Speaker 1:All right, we'll leave it at that, corinne. Thank you for what you do. Thank you for coming on the podcast. We'll bring you back some other time and talk about something else. Sweet Love it. All right, folks. There you have it.
Speaker 1:Thanks to Corinne for indulging me and coming on the podcast today. I can't really emphasize enough that what she is attempting to do with the Pro Trail Runners Association, what they're trying to do overall, this is no easy feat. This is something that I have been a part of in various facets over the course of really the last decade and I've recognized from very early on that it is a hard problem to solve because of many of the aspects that we talked about throughout the course of this podcast. Links to everything will be in the show notes. I encourage all of you to go and check that out. If you found any of these previous podcasts all about drugs and sport interesting, please pass them on to your friends, your colleagues and your running partners. That's the best way to share the love and share the information so that we can all try to get on the same page. Next week we are in for another banger with my homeboy, gabe Bida, who has this interesting perspective on something that is going to be incredibly relevant for trail and ultra runners out there, and that is how to actually bring anti-doping efforts into a novel audience. Gabe has this incredible story where he was responsible for many of the aspects when USADA took over the UFC's anti-doping program, so that was a completely new audience to the anti-doping world. Usada took it over and Gabe has this really incredible story of some of his involvement within that sport and with those athletes, their coaches, their trainers and the gyms they worked with. It's going to be a really cool conversation. I hope you guys stick around for that next week.
Speaker 1:As always, this podcast is brought to you without sponsors, endorsements, advertisers of any kind, and that is so that I can tell the honest to God truth about any of this stuff without any repercussions to my non-existent income stream. So if you love this podcast, go ahead and give it a like or give it a share in your podcast player of choice. Podcast. Go ahead and give it a like or give it a share in your podcast player of choice. Give it a review that helps the podcast out a lot. Or just come say hi to me in person and give me a high five or give me a hug. I always really appreciate the feedback that I get in the public. It means a lot to me that you guys are getting such incredible knowledge out of this podcast and you value it as well. All right, folks. That is it for today and, as always, we will see you out on the trails.