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Great blog! I never fully understood the whereabouts system but it's now possible to see just how easy a missed test is. As someone not particularly brilliant at keeping a diary I can only imagine the sort of trouble I would end up in trying to use it!

Let's hope that WADA sort out the app soon, sport is now globalised and although people don't always have access to a computer, most will have access to a smart phone. Less excuses mean less missed tests and a cleaner sport.

I think that while the system does appear to be a massive burden and inconvenience, it remains at the moment the most effective way to prevent doping in sport. I know I would hate to have to update my whereabouts and personal situation on a perpetual basis, but I guess if the outcome of failing to do so is to be banished from competing then for an athlete, it's a worthwhile, if not often futile action. I have to agree with Ian Smith though and point to the morality debate over 'innocent until proven guilty' and not the other way round as this appears.

I think I’d be more embarrassed to wear the new Olympic kit, than being caught as a drug cheat!

The best way to combat drugs cheats is for ALL sports to adopt the biological passport that cycling uses. Cycling gets a lot of bad publicity due to the use of PED's but does the most to fight against drug mis-use and it's a system that needs to be adopted across the board. Also, the ban system needs to be entirely consistent across all sports (including American NBA and NFL) so that there are no anomolies.

Interesting to read but it wont change anything. The three strikes or missed tests (in 18 months) rule means that a cheating athlete can miss two tests before having to take keeping the timetable seriously.

Because the tests are random that could take nearly the 18 months to be caught, whereby the three strikes are re-instated for the next 18 months.

The drug tests will never stop athletes taking them, but it does moderate how much they could take, which is as good as it gets really.

Finally, pharmaceutical companies are known to approach young athletes with derivatives of banned drugs that are not on the list and get them to take them until they are discovered and added to the list.

This isn't even cheating, technically, but you see how complex the issue can be to control. Many banned drugs are naturally derived so the differences between them and normal over the counter substances can be minor. Note the change in attitude to caffeine for example.

We should be appreciating athletics for what it is. Watching people pushing the physical limits of being human. That is as amazing as it gets.

Tom. Quality piece - someone actually taking the time to get the true perspective of using the system.

Unlike another comment above, I believe ADAMS really does add value and changes things - because it's not just about the number of tests an athlete could choose to miss, but the frequency of testing too that is important - hence targetted testing of athletes over a continuous number of days in some cases.

I would say that there are still some issues though - and the Offredo case highlights one of these - ie when one of his missed tests related to a day where his ADAMS entry did not correspond to where he was, even though he was actually at a UCI sanctioned race and therefore available for testing!

Thanks for this Tom, I remember your piece on the original ADAMS system which I found fascinating. Glad the system has got easier to use but there are still massive areas for improvement. I don't understand why it can be so hard to create a password based system with real time interfacing between athletes and the testers. The other point is that in all honesty I don't like the fact that you have to be somewhere everyday. At the end of the day it is a job and sometimes you need to be able to switch off. Even if it is one day per week where you can leave blank without the fear of a knock on the door - I'm sure that would make a difference.

It doesn't matter how much we do to catch the cheats if they don't get a proper punishment when they're caught and quite frankly, in this respect WADA are a joke, sport will never be 'clean' when cheats are allowed to prosper.

We should still refuse visas for ALL athletes who've failed drugs tests, regardless of what anyone else says and no matter how loudly they whinge about it, it's far too late to move the Olympics anywhere else and would any nation really forego the chance to compete just to stick up for a few of their CHEATS.

Better not tell Rio Ferdinand!!

The last paragraph makes an excellent point, but it is countered by the fact that so many people cheated before any real testing system was implemented, and SOMETHING had to be done. Whether this kind of draconian measure is that something is uncertain, but it is still a positive step in removing the ability to cheat from athletes.

What I would say is that WADA should be looking to learn from those caught cheating in the past, see if they can build up a pattern of behaviour that tells them when most people are likely to use performance-enhancers - like Dwain Chambers said, the optimum period for using certain drugs is around three months before an event in the intense training period.

We know that athletes have a possible wide range of performance enhancers available to them, and so testing should be properly targeted to coincide with their likely window of use. Athletes know the specifics of the steroids - their half-life, the maximum dose and cycles required to avoid attention. WADA needs to use this information and target testing around those cycles whilst maintaining a reasonable out-of-competition testing schedule as well. So three months before an event, athletes taking part in that event can be more heavily targeted, and ADAMS will come into its own at that point.

I do agree that the system is topsy-turvy, almost presuming guilt over innocence, but until sport is able to declare itself largely drug-free, this has to be the way testing is administered. Short of mandatory testing of every athlete, which is prohibitively expensive, anyway.