Tyler Hamilton:
So here’s how we beat the testers:
Tip 1: Wear a watch.
Tip 2: Keep your cellphone handy.
Tip 3: Know your glowtime: how long you’ll test positive after you take the substance.
What you’ll notice is that none of these things are particularly difficult to do. That’s because the tests were very easy to beat. In fact, they weren’t drug tests. They were more like discipline tests, IQ tests. If you were careful and paid attention, you could dope and be 99 percent certain that you would not get caught.
If you believe in ethical testers, then the easiest explanation of how to beat testers is the 3 strikes rule (applicable to all federations that adhere to the WADA code). Hamilton again:
“Mister Hamilton? I’m here from USADA to administer a doping test.”
Haven and I looked at each other for a long second. Then, moving as one, we hit the deck; we lay flat on our bellies on the tile floor of our new kitchen.
“Hello? Anybody there?”
We crawled across the floor and into the safety of the living room, and listened to the knocking.
We put them off for the day. I fudged my whereabouts form, drank a ton of water, peed a lot. Then, when I was sure I wasn’t glowing, I took the test.
Back then, he got away with that not counting as a strike! But even today, even IF the testers are strictly ethical, you still get two free missed tests before you have to really worry. That's why it's so important to actually look at HOW MANY TIMES athletes get tested. If it's only a few times a year, then it's just too easy to "beat" the test, since you have to be VERY unlucky to get tested at the wrong time (see the next point) and even if you do, you just hit the deck and take a strike.
Not only that, but there are rules about when testers can come knocking. And there is protocol too which tells you when they're very unlikely to come knocking. And there are places where they're very unlikely to come knocking. And there are ways to take steroids that have a very short glow time - like orally with oil. Hamilton again:
Around 2001 the red eggs (testosterone capsules) were used less than testosterone patches, which were more convenient. They were like big Band-Aids with a clear gel in the centre; you could leave one on for a couple of hours, get a boost of testosterone, and by morning be clean as a newborn baby.
Finally, all this assumes the federations WANT to catch people. There are strong suggestions that the UCI covered for Armstrong and made positive tests go away (cortisone AND EPO). Zorzoli recently did something similar for Chris Froome (cortisone) and has been implicated in covering for the Rabobank team (Rasmussen). In athletics, look at the way the Jamaican federation simply failed to test their athletes. And all of this is simply what makes it to the surface.
If you're a nobody, then you probably wouldn't get protection. But there is a clear conflict of interests where a big name is concerned. So while the 80% might still have to submit to the same "IQ Tests" - there is (possibly) the added safety for the big names, that they'll get advance warning about testing methodology, so-called "random" tests, and even possibly have tests just "go away"
So to say it can't happen is just naive. As I said before, if it was impossible to beat, no one would use and thus no one would test positive. Testing merely attenuates the usage
