The Voluntary Anti-Doping Association (VADA) was founded in 2011 by Dr. Margaret Goodman, a neurologist who formerly served as a ringside physician in Nevada. In the years since, it has come to be considered almost synonymous with PED testing in combat sports. But what exactly is VADA and how does it work? On the first episode of The Fighter Health Podcast, BoxingScene’s Kieran Mulvaney spoke with Dr. Goodman; an abbreviated version of the interview, edited for clarity and brevity, is below.
How does VADA work? You have to be invited to participate, correct?
Yes. And it can be in an athlete’s contract. I’m not privy to the actual contracts that fighters sign, but what I’ve been told is, more often than not, it will indicate in the contract that they sign for an event that they have to undergo drug testing. Sometimes it will specify that that testing has to be under VADA, sometimes it will be non-specific.
And then let’s say it’s in the contract that they’re supposed to undergo drug testing by VADA, then we have certain legal documents that an athlete has to sign and submit which lets us test them and distribute the results to the appropriate parties.
You talk about VADA doing the testing, but there isn’t a big VADA lab with a fleet of uniformed VADA testers that you’re sending out, so who is actually collecting the samples?
VADA itself does not physically go collect the blood and the urine. There are certified doping collection officers through a company called Clearidium. They originate in Denmark, they test worldwide, and they’re just wonderful. We’ve never had any issues with them when we request that athletes undergo a test. The doping collection officer will have a document from me and VADA indicating exactly where the athlete is, and then they will arrange to test the athlete.
Sometimes they’ll get tested within a day. Sometimes, I may say we don’t want them tested for a week or so. That will be up to VADA to make that recommendation, and then it will depend on the doping collection company to arrange that travel to the athlete’s location.
Our biggest problem is when fighters don’t tell us that they’ve changed their location. They may update us, but sometimes they don’t, and so often that’s a big problem. We may arrive somewhere in the UK or somewhere in Japan, and the athlete has gone on vacation, or they’ve decided that they want to train elsewhere, but no one has told us. So that’s a problem for the doping collection company, because obviously that can incur additional costs.
And I suppose the number of times that you want to test somebody can vary, like you said. I assume there’s a budget consideration here, in that someone’s got to pay for all this testing.
When fighters sign up for VADA, whoever is subsidizing the testing – for example, a promoter – will often give us a budget. Because our testing is so extensive, when we actually collect urine and blood, it’s costly. And we have to adhere to that budget; so, often that will be reflected in the exact number of tests that are performed throughout the time period when the athlete is enrolled. So if they’re enrolled two months in advance, and we only get a certain amount of funds for that, we’ll have to adhere to that budget, so that can limit the number of tests. I also think that sometimes it’s not understood that it’s not exactly how often you’re tested, but what you’re tested for. So that makes a big difference.
What are they tested for? Can a fighter’s contract specify what you test for, or is there a standard panel? And who actually tests the specimens?
Fighters have no involvement in what we test for. Neither does any commission, nor any promoters. As a rule, we test for everything that’s on our list every single time, except for blood tests. We may not draw blood from a fighter every single time. And the blood tests typically are looking for human growth hormone, and sometimes for EPO, although most EPO tests are done in the urine.
The laboratory that we use predominantly is SMRTL in Utah. There are only two World Anti-Doping Agency-accredited labs in the United States, and the other one is in LA, affiliated with UCLA.
There’s a set panel of tests. We test for everything all the time. We have no out of competition panel. For example, under WADA, there is an in-competition and out of competition panel. And the main way that that differs is that stimulants and narcotics are not included for out of competition. But we include that on every test that we do, and we actually have additional tests that are not typically in the panel that most national anti-doping organizations would include. That includes EPO. It includes the test for synthetic testosterone, and there are some other things that we always include, like insulin, other things that are not routinely included by national anti-doping organizations. We go above and beyond, and we do that every time.
This might be a stupid question, but is there any difference with the panels for female and male fighters?
No, but it’s interesting that you ask that. When the anti-doping lab tests female fighters, there are certain other things they may look for, so it’s important for them to know the gender of the athlete when they’re testing.
And then how long does it generally take to turn around? Because obviously, these labs have plenty of samples to go through, right?
We try to get a response as quickly as possible. It’s another thing we see on social media a lot: how come the results didn’t come back the next day, or how come they took two weeks? But the truth of the matter is, number one, Clearidium will always expedite everything as quickly as possible. So what we do is we send specimens overnight either via DHL or FedEx. Obviously, if it’s coming from Saudi Arabia or it’s coming from Japan, it may take an extra day or two. We try to cut down the time period, and that’s whether we’re testing out of competition or in competition.
But that’s just phase one, because some of these tests take a long time. One thing the lab will do is they’ll make sure that the specimen is intact, that it hasn’t been tampered with. Then it has to go through different tests, and some of those tests can take days to even weeks to get back. But we pay to expedite everything because we understand the importance if someone was to test positive. Obviously the one thing we hate is when a fight’s canceled. But it’s important that those results are received as quickly as possible. So, yeah, sometimes it can take a couple weeks to get things back. But we expedite everything and do it absolutely as quickly as it could possibly be done.
I wanted to circle back to an answer you just gave about what happens after the testing. Should somebody fail a test, do you rely on managers, promoters etc to reveal that or do you announce it?
We don’t announce anything. The bottom line is, the purpose of the testing is to make sure that the athlete as much as possible going into an event is clean of prohibited substances. The commissions themselves are really the sole adjudicator from a legal standpoint, so we don’t put things out. As a matter of fact, I never give results to the media when someone’s tested adverse; that’s not our role. Often, things seem to “leak out” for various reasons. But anyone that’s involved in our testing has to be affiliated with a commission, so the commissions receive those results, and the Association of Boxing Commissions receives those results.
Then they begin the process of how to assess whether or not the athlete took something intentionally or unintentionally, or how it got in their system. That’s not our role, but we don’t go public. You know, there have been questions of whether or not we should, and I understand that. I mean, obviously the public wants to know everything, but that would be up to the commission, and some commissions are more forthright with that. Some commissions adjudicate the results within the commission and give a sanction, such as a suspension – maybe it’s six months, maybe it’s a year or two years, whatever. Some commissions may do that, but they won’t put that out in the public domain, but that’s up to them; they are the legal authorities that can adjudicate results, not us. It’s up to them to determine how they want results released. I may want it a different way, but they’re the ones that are legally in charge.
Is it frustrating when a fighter tests positive and their response is ‘Oh, there was something wrong with the tests. The tests got mixed up.’ Or ‘It’s a dirty supplement,’ and you’re sitting there, can’t say anything, but you’re like, ‘No, it wasn’t. It just wasn’t.’
You know, I totally understand why that may be a comment that’s made, but that’s why we take such great precautions with the anti-doping collection partner we have. We jump through all kinds of hoops to make sure that the chain of custody is perfectly maintained. We follow everything from the minute it leaves to go through DHL or FedEx to it arriving at the lab to make sure it arrived as quickly as possible, untouched. And that’s why we go through all of that, because that’s so important. That’s why we have these highly trained individuals that undergo so much education before they’re even allowed to be a chaperone with a fighter watching them pee.
So that’s super, super important, and I think commissions need to do more of that and also use anti-doping agency accredited labs. I think it’s crazy not to in this day and age; if you’re going to do the testing, you do the testing the right way. And that’s why I think that an organization like VADA is so valuable to combat sports, because it is important that it’s done the right way, that it’s done extensively the right way, so that everything is tested for. Often, commissions just use labs, and this isn’t to denigrate them, but they’ll use a lab that might do a fine job, but they’re not testing for nearly the same substances that we’re testing for. And so things get missed.
What have been the real positives that you’ve gotten from doing this?
You know, that depends on which day you’re asking me. Sometimes I just feel like I want to crawl in a hole. But the worst thing for me is when someone tests positive, because it brings on so many different issues. And I hate that. It hurts an athlete’s career for a number of reasons. No matter how it’s adjudicated, it’s just awful. I’m really happy when the tests are negative and we can send athletes individual letters that their test has been negative.
I think the best thing that’s happened is education. Even those who spout all kinds of insults and silliness that’s untrue on social media are at least aware of it as an issue in protecting fighters, and that’s super important.
Kieran Mulvaney has written, broadcast and podcasted about boxing for HBO, Showtime, ESPN and Reuters, among other outlets. He also writes regularly for National Geographic, has written several books on the Arctic and Antarctic, and is at his happiest hanging out with wild polar bears. His website is www.kieranmulvaney.com.
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