Either way, as another guy pointed out US athletes have a really quite absurdly high rate of TUEs. Maybe that's just because the average American is unhealthy, maybe that's just because the US healthcare system catches more of those things, but it's still odd that those athletes coincidentally take performance-enhancing drugs as medication for their medical condition. It's also odd how low the TUE rate is in other countries in comparison - WADA seems more willing to approve requests from the US, which maybe explains part of the discrepancy.

[–] sandbox@lemmy.world 3 points 3 months ago (1 children)

Slightly more recent version of the same document, as well as the ADRV report

https://www.wada-ama.org/sites/default/files/2024-04/2022_anti-doping_testing_figures_en.pdf

https://www.wada-ama.org/sites/default/files/2023-05/2020_adrv_report.pdf

[–] filoria@lemmy.ml 2 points 3 months ago (1 children)

Global positive test rate is 0.67%. 25% of those are "legal" (~250). Of the illegal ones, 25 Chinese, 57 Americans, 135 Russians.

The Beijing lab reported 25 AAFs, for a 0.23% positive test rate over 10326 tests. The LA and SLC labs together reported 153 AAFs, for a 1.54% positive test rate over 9904 tests. So... Eh? Isn't this the opposite result being claimed? The US is able to run interference for a good proportion of their AAFs by claiming "medical reasons" and other bullshit.

[–] sandbox@lemmy.world 1 points 3 months ago

I feel that that it’s very difficult to formulate any real statistically significant findings from this data because you’d need way more information than we have available to us from the WADA report, personally. Your point that China has a very low rate is completely fair, and I agree with you on that, but there are just so many variables in the mix and the sample sizes are so low, I’d be uncomfortable in making a real conclusion with the data available - all you can really do is point to correlations.

I’m not arguing with you or saying you’re wrong or anything, just to be clear - just saying it’s really messy and complex. And I agree that the US is broadly pushing sinophobic propaganda as per usual.