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Thoroughly interesting blog. My view on Christine Ohuruogu are firmly on the record, so it will be interesting to hear what you think of the system and whether "it works".

Am I correct in reading that the athlete needs to tell the system when they will be away taking part in a UK team event under the auspices of Team GB or the relevant NGB?

This sounds like a really interesting experiment to follow, I'm looking forward to the updates. Good luck with not falling foul of the testers!

Very interesting read. From my armchair, I see it as a good system in the fight to ensure drug-free sport. I look forward to following your progress, what a great idea to put yourself in the athletes' position to see how it affects them.

"First, the philosophy. UKAD - and world governing body Wada - would say it is a small price to pay for keeping cheats out of sport."

In that case why don't they subject themselves to this big brother type intrusion. Its a small price when you're not the person subjected to it.

Can't wait for the outcome of this. Personally I think the requirements are simple and a completely minimal price for a clean sport.

I predict that you will sail through your time in the system quite easily with no misses, and no errors. Which will then unfortunately lead me to be even more suspicious of any full-time professional athlete who manages to "miss" three tests opportunities in 18 months.

Fascinating experiment. Would also be interested if you did the drugs tests. Not because I think you've anything to hide, but to see if you could be careful enough to avoid all the cough medicines, herbal teas, contaminated meat etc that are often blamed for a positive test.

Also, I want to know if you're juicing :-)

Very interesting to read and very cool for you to do it and for UK Sport to let you do it.

But SewerSide, if he did test positive (not that he will) what would competition would he be banned from? My guess is that he would be banned from any competition that is sanctioned by a sport connected with the IOC. But, in this case it is a completely ludicrous question. :-)

Athletes (from all sports) complaining about this generous system really frustrate me. If you're taking banned substances to help your training then to avoid detection you need to avoid the testers - and have 2 opportunities to do so. Only banning on the 3rd breach is very generous in my view.

Have you thought of also signing up to the Biological Passport that cycling has in addition to whereabouts?

And to those of you who say "other sports are cleaner than cycling and don't need the passport" - I point you in the direction of Operacion Puerto....

SewerSide has a good point about casual ingestion of banned substances - one only has to think of Alain Baxter's DQ at the Salt Lake City Winter Olympics.

Assuming that you will be receiving a visit from the testers during the next few months, are you being subjected to proper tests?

I was at a party once and overheard a friend talking to some chap about "having to let them know where I am" and "If I stay over I'll have to send them a message in case they want to do a drugs test"
I thought I was at a party with a convict -I had a look for a tag but all I saw were two very well toned ankles...

At the outset the system was far less flexible and considerate. As a manager who depends upon a secretary I am sure I would have failed before Christine. I guess it remains a trial for some personalities and not easy for any.

Great to see a journalist making an effort to find something out for themselves for a change, rather than relying on relayed information on the wire. Good work Tom.

Does Andy Murray really put all the info into Adams himself? Surely his mum/PA does it. It may be draconian, but I haven't heard him come out with a better solution. Cheats cheat in training and out of competition, this is the only way to catch them, as far as I can see.

And surely there must be a place for an Adams App? GPS locator, updates on position, Athlete able to make changes on the go, tester able to locate more precisely where someone might be. If Facebook and Google can track our movements using smartphones for allegedly nefarious purposes, surely it can be used to track athletes for this purpose (whether you deem it nefarious from a human rights point of view or not)? I'm not of the App-designing ilk, but if anyone is, I demand a share of any profits please.

Frankly it's a ridiculous system. I regularly compete (Rifle Shooting) with a number of people who are on the system and struggle consistently to ctually be at the designated place/time due to unforseen work commitments. One police officer I know has missed over a dozen slots during the past few years because of being called to incidents towards the end of his shift and then being kept there for hours, luckily the testers never came on those occasions. One manufacturing engineer I know very nearly missed a test because he had to work an extra few hours at the end of his shift rapidly repairing a safety critical system on his site. Neither of those situations really lend itself to thinking about getting online to notify of the situation, not when peoples safety could be at risk. Also in both cases their employes refused point blank to allow them to name any time during work hours as neither would allow the testers on site and neither had a whole hour for lunch to go off-site and wait.

It is these part-time sportsmen that suffer most from these measures, I know several who could be good enough to challenge for international spots but are simply not wiling to subject themselves to it until they are certain they have a good chance. Full timers can have regular training schedules every day and can also pay someone to help them, amateurs can not and the reality ois that over half of all olympians are amateurs in the UK.

I should add that none of them complain about the system itself, merely about the frequency. If it were nominating hours on 2/3 days a week then 99% of people could manage that perfectly fine, but 7 days a week is just impossible to follow for those with irregular work patterns.

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Hi all,

Great Blog.

With the amount of time athletes and sports people in general spend twittering etc to tell us what they get up to surely they can adopt this system. I agree with BennyBlanco, there must be a way of incorporating a Google mapping thing or smart phone app to sort this out?

It does sound quite restrictive for those elite athletes that are not full time. Job, family and life would get in the way a bit.

It's frustrating to hear of the likes of Murray and Nadal complaining about the system, I'm sure they'd be the first to complain if it weren't there and someone stormed the tennis scene, beating them regularly and was never caught 'juicing' because there system in place wasn't stringent enough.

It also worries me that cycling is criticised for catching its drug cheats. Cycling as a sport went through some very dark years, it would be the first to admit - but it is coming out the other side now and doing everything it can to eradicate the cheats. There may be other sports that have similar drugs problems but no-one hears about them because they aren;t so focussed on catching the cheats.

And good luck in the experiment Tom, hopefully you'll show that even with a full-time job is it possible (by mo means easy but definitely possible) to adhere to the rules. And as others have asked, will you actually be subjected to random testing?

This is a truly sinister system. Whatever happened to the basic human right to privacy? I hope and believe that this Big Brother system will collapse the first time that it is challenged in the European Court for Human Rights.

It is also a profoundly stupid one size fits all system. As Hackerjack points out, the system is completely ludicrous for amateur athletes.

I frankly would rather compete with cheats or not compete at all than surrender my basic human right to privacy to this odious fig leaf of a system that doesn't work anyway.

Does anyone seriously believe that the whereabout system will deter those who are determined to cheat?

Still hard to fathom how Ohuruogo was given an MBE, unless it was for Most Bizarre Excuse.

I don't see an issue with having to specify a one hour period for every day, the problem I have with the system is that the technology being used to support it sounds incredibly outdated. Surely given the nature of a sportspersons job, the system should be able to accomodate the use of smart phone or tablet apps that can call out your location to testers and lessen the administrative pain.

Nice comment, Max Merit. "The track where I train was occupied when I arrived, so I left and went to another track." If that's the most bizarre "excuse" you've ever heard, you've led a very sheltered life. Especially since it was demonstrably true.

Darn, I'm letting you Ohuruogu haters lead me off-topic...

Back on topic, I think Tom is very brave to take this on. It does seem incredibly intrusive and demanding: as others have mentioned, fine for a full-time athlete, but not for a working person or student (like Christine Ohuruogu...). My hope is that as they realise that the system isn't that easy to live with, it will calm some of the less hysterical Ohuruogu doubters (if there are any out there: the evidence for their existence is scant). Some might even remember how new the system was when she fell foul of it, but that's too optimistic even for someone foolish enough to believe that some athletes may accidentally fall foul of the technical doping rules without actually doping.

And while we're at it, why don't you haters go after Rio Ferdinand, who departed the training ground after being told he had a test?! Don't you find those circumstances slightly more suspicious than an unexpected school sports day?

looking ahead a bit, say you did actually test positive for something tom then what potential ramifications would this have for sport in general. When shane warne says "oh yeah my mum gave it to me" we all just think liar, but i reckon if you tested positive then the system could be fallible. If possible, and i know it may be tough on top of what you are already doing, try and take/eat/drink some of these things that athletes have claimed make you test positive and see where it ends up

If you recall Tim, it was 3 missed tests, that Christine was given an Olympic lifetime ban for, that was upheld on appeal by the Court of Arbitration. It was only overturned by the British Olympic Association, much to the dismay by many in the International athletics community.

If you recall Tim, it was 3 missed tests, that Christine was given an Olympic lifetime ban for, that was upheld on appeal by the Court of Arbitration. It was only overturned by the British Olympic Association, much to the dismay by many in the International athletics community.
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That's an odd thing to say when if she was from almost anywhere else in the world she wouldn't have been banned from the Olympics.

It's not so much the ban being overturned (which was ridiculous) that gripes, but that she said (allgedly, as reported in the press) that she would switch allegiance to another country (from memory, Nigeria) and race for them at the Olympics if she was banned by the BOA. That stank then and still stinks now.

On an altogether more serious note....how does this compare in severity to Dirs' Mission Impossible.

I think this system is a step in the right direction. In its infancy it resulted in many missed tests as athletes were not where they said they would be.

My only gripe is that this system isn't universally adopted by every nation in europe , let alone the world. If we want fairer competitions we need iniversal application of programmes like this.

Tiffani offili porters confusion lies in the fact that for years she has been used to the lax american sysytem.

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