World Rugby will not reveal how many doping tests it will conduct over the next six weeks of the World Cup. But it maintains that the sport is clean at elite level.
Rugby union led the number of positive tests in Britain last year. But World Cup officials at Twickenham say the sport at international level does not have a problem with drug cheats, despite the game becoming bigger, faster and stronger.
“We do not believe there is a culture of systematic doping at elite level,” said a World Rugby spokesman. “Nonetheless, we are not complacent about doping in our sport.”
Sixteen of the 48 people serving United Kingdom Anti Doping (Ukad) bans come from rugby union. Rugby league is next highest on the list, then boxing and cycling.
According to World Anti Doping Agency (Wada) figures, in 2013 rugby had a higher percentage of positive drugs tests than athletics or cycling, based on results compiled and analysed from 33 Wada-accredited laboratories around the world.
Cycling and athletics had rates of 1.2 per cent of positive tests; rugby was 1.3 per cent. In that compilation of doping figures, 22,252 cyclists 24,942 athletes were tested, but just 6,126 rugby players underwent blood and urine examinations.
No senior international Irish rugby player has tested positive in the past decade, and no player has tested positive in England’s top flight for four years. However, rugby union is responsible for 11 of the 25 cases recorded by Ukad in the last 12 months.
"Rugby union is deemed one of our priority [target] sports simply because of the results we are finding," a Ukad spokesperson told The Irish Times. "There is a perception out there that you need to be bigger, faster and stronger to play rugby."
World Rugby is now conducting research into body size in the sport as part of an ongoing longitudinal study that began in 2004.
Two cases
Two cases over the past few years, involving South African Under 20 player
Carlo Del Fava
and
Sam Chalmers
, son of
Scotland
and British and Irish Lions star Craig, were both due to the players trying to build a bigger body size using banned substances.
South Africa’s “Chiliboy” Ralepelle is the most recent high-profile case to have been sanctioned for doping after World Rugby announced earlier this month that the international hooker had been suspended for two years.
The 28-year-old tested positive for a banned anabolic steroid following an out-of-competition test conducted in 2014, when he was recovering from a cruciate knee ligament injury sustained playing for Toulouse against Biarritz.
World Rugby increased its funding for drug testing by 30 per cent, bringing the cost of policing the sport to €2 million a year, the same as the IAAF, the governing body for athletics spends annually on testing.
On its website, World Rugby lists just 79 violations after 12 years of testing. However, it said this week that it has a more extensive testing program at this World Cup than any before. Blood tests conducted in past years are stored at the Wada-approved laboratory at Kings College.
All 20 tested
Players from all 20 teams have been tested this year, with 980 tests conducted prior to the start of the World Cup. About one-third of those were blood tests.
More than 2,100 tests were conducted last year by World Rugby across elite levels from under 20s to 7’s and women’s rugby.
According to Ukad, rugby does return higher numbers than other sports. But it perceives the main problem at the level underneath those elite players taking part in the World Cup.
Ukad also cites many incidences of young men using steroids, not to get better at sport but because of perceived body image. The ease of availability of steroids, now bought anonymously over the internet, aids that process.
In rugby, the most at-risk young men are those trying to break into professional teams and seeking their first contract. Once in the professional system, the incentive goes down because they have a contract and the testing becomes more intense.
The motivations are better understood because testing is now intelligence-based and not a random event. Testers target sports such as rugby using police intelligence, border patrol, Crime Stoppers and information gleaned from clubs.
“Our intelligence from the various sources we use is that there is not a systematic problem at the elite level of the game in rugby,” said the Ukad spokesperson.
“If you look at the ones who have been caught, they are all at the lower end of the game.”
