Thers are some drugs which can be detected long after use. So if swimmer, let’s call her Dame Druggie has been using PED’s and manages to win 7 gold medals at the Kabul* Olympics. She then avoids being caught, the WADA personnel are busy having a party, got drunk, accepted bribes and sexual favours, eloped with locals whatever. Now I know that off season testing can occur, but will Dame Druggie be able to avoid being caught simply by saying, “I retire suckers”? Surely not? OTH do you really want to bother retired athletes with random drug tests, especially since it could well be an effort ro discredit them carried on by their erstwhile opponents?
The short answer is “no.” I don’t know of any sport that does drug testing of athletes after they retire. I don’t think any athlete would sign a contract requiring this, and a positive test after retirement wouldn’t prove anything, anyway. The question is whether an athlete used PEDs to improve performance in competition.
On the other hand, in many sports they keep blood and urine samples for years after the event and re-test them as the tests become more sophisticated.
Is there some drug that can be detected long after it’s use and only long after it’s use? Otherwise WADA’s not getting past "I started it after I retired to keep up with my students’’
So, Dame Druggie just has to say " I retire" the minute she steps of the podium and she is in the clear :eek::dubious:?
Obviously there must be some standard. Someone who has been out of the game for forty years and takes 10 prescription drugs is obviously not going to be a practical target, but last years champion who quit immidietly and still active on the exhibition circuit and whose biceps seem to have reduced dramticallty?
I believe some events do post-competition testing. But it’s done right after the competition not a day later. Once a person has completed the competition and left the immediate supervision of the event, there’s no way to determine if they used drugs before or after the competition itself. You’re going to just be testing for general drug use at that point rather than finding out if a drug’s use affected the outcome of the event.
Little Nemo has it right. Immediately after a competition typically the winner plus some other randomly chosen participants are approached and told they have been selected for testing. They then have a shadow follow them around until they pee.
Of course they can refuse to pee. The athletic boards have no legal authority. At least in non-dictatorships. They would just strip the title away. So you can say “Retired!” just as you get off the platform and they will say “Disqualified!”
