Anti-doping boss David Sharpe says there is no excuse for elite athletes to test positive to banned substances, considering the amount of education today.
But he admits inadvertent doping does happen in professional sport and said athletes below the elite level are more likely to dope and not realise because one in five supplements on the shelf are tainted.
There has been three high-profile cases in 2019 with AFL star Willie Rioli, NRL player James Segeyaro and Australian swimmer Shayna Jack all testing positive to a banned substance.
Mr Segeyaro and Ms Jack tested positive to Ligandrol, a non-steroid anabolic agent popular with bodybuilders, with the latter denying she deliberately took the substance.
The Australian Sports Anti-Doping Authority ran 12 awareness-raising campaigns specifically targeting Ligandrol in the 2018-19 financial year.
Only steroid awareness was more heavily flagged.
Mr Sharpe emphasised his remarks were not in relation to any specific athlete and that he could not comment on an ongoing investigation.
But when asked if ignorance was an excuse for elite athletes to test positive to a banned substance, he did not mince his words.
“I don’t think there is an excuse,” Mr Sharpe told AAP.
“There’s education out there, we do intelligence bulletins, we do social media campaigns around particular substances.
“Things do happen at the highest level where products get in people’s systems inadvertently, it does happen.
But there is a lot of information out there at those (elite) levels and not just to say ‘Don’t dope, go to the WADA prohibited list and that tells you what not to have’.
“We target our intelligence at specific events and issues for that reason, looking at global trends.”
Globally, athletes test positive to a banned substance at about 1.5 per cent while Australia is sitting at 0.6 per cent.
Mr Sharpe said they’ll never eliminate doping but believes Australia can be a world leader in preventing cheating.
“You’re always going to have people that make mistakes and you’re always going to have people that want to cheat the system,” Mr Sharpe said.
“That’s where we’ve got to be more effective in targeting the people who want to cheat the system, looking at the substances coming into the country working with border force and educating those ones that inadvertently dope.”
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