Focusing on CIS football PEDs

Justin Dunk

Photo Courtesy

In the wake of last year’s University of Waterloo Warriors football program’s anti-doping scandal, the Canadian Centre for Ethics in Sport has stepped up their efforts to crack down on performance enhancing drugs in CIS football.

“We had said when all of this had come about over the course of the summer, that we were planning on taking some of our tests from other areas that we might have been testing and at least for the short term focusing them on CIS football,” said Director of Executive Operations and Public Affairs for the CCES, Rosemary Pitfield. “We recognize that there is an issue.”

One of the other issues the CCES has come to comprehend is there are simply not enough resources to test Canadian athletes the way the centre would prefer.

“The reality is it’s not a sustainable way to continue testing in this area. We’re literally taking tests, which we would be using for other developmental sports and using them in football,” said Pitfield. “We only have a limited number of tests that we can afford to do through the course of a year.”

The CCES tests athletes from the Olympic level on down including developmental sports, CIS, CCAA, junior football, Canada games, Pan-am games and more.

The focus on CIS football has been clear with the entire Wilfrid Laurier University football team subjected to testing procedures and three University of Guelph Gryphon football team members tested in January of this year alone.

The CCES has attempted to keep athletes, especially CIS football players, off balance.
“What we try not to do is provide any information that would allow people to target on our testing and figure out what we might be planning next,” said Pitfield.

Some people have been led to believe that the anti-doping tests are completely random and athletes will only be tested during their ‘playing season.’

“Certainly in the past what we’ve primarily done is done random testing and in season [testing]. What we’re trying to do now is hit more out of season testing because we know that is a higher risk period,” said Pitfield. “We are securing more intelligent information, which CIS schools are helping to provide, which allows us to help determine who, what and where we test.”
There are three different ways that the CCES makes decisions on which athletes they will test.

“There is random, there is what we call intelligence testing, which may lead to targeted testing and there is weighted testing – testing sports, positions etc. that might be at higher risk,” said Pitfield. “We use all three in combination and separately.”

Here are some examples of the three ways testing participants can be chosen.

Random testing may happen in or out of competition. For example, in competition the CCES might pick a couple of names off the roster out of a hat and walk in and test those players. Targeted testing uses intelligence information to determine which athlete or athletes may be targeted for testing. The CCES will review performance data and other information, which may be tracked, to help the CCES determine specific athletes they will test.

The CCES uses weighted testing to prioritize sports and positions within sports that may be at risk of using performance-enhancing substances.

“To be honest until this [the UW scandal] occurred in CIS it was random,” said Pitfield.
“The only time before that we were really able to test was once athletes started training camp and through the season. What’s happened now is, since Waterloo, the universities are now providing us with athlete home information, we know their training schedules, so all of that information is helping us to be able to now change when we test, so athletes now need to anticipate that we could be there at any point.”

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