Doping - With The Olympics Comes Temptation

With the Olympics comes increased scrutiny of the anti-doping policies of competition climbing

- John Burgman

Climbers in the lead-up to the 2020 Olympics will be subjected to an onslaught of drug tests, but that won’t be entirely foreign to many of them. Drugs and the Olympics have been inexorably connected since the mid 1970s, when drug testing became standard. Highprofile efforts to eliminate the use of PEDs by Olympians include the establishment of the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) in 1999 and management of an ever-increasing list of substances prohibited at the Olympics by WADA beginning in 2004.

Climbing’s governing body, the International Federation of Sport Climbing (IFSC), established its own anti-doping policy in 2010, and the organization uses WADA’s general framework—known as the Anti-Doping Code—for its guiding principles. World Cup winners are drug-tested, as are random youth finalists. In some cases, competitors have to cede their daily schedules so they can be drug-tested anytime and anyplace.

“It’s unlikely to see a lot of climbers using performance-enhancing drugs, but I am pretty sure there have been some climbers experimenting with them,” says the Czech Republic’s Libor Hroza, a former speed climbing world record holder who notes that he has heard rumors of doping on the circuit over the years. “The more life-changing opportunities [that competitors] will have from becoming very successful climbers means higher chances that someone will dope.”

Thus far, competition climbing has mostly been scandal-free, at least in regards to PEDs, as opposed to some violations for recreational substances like marijuana and cocaine.