Riders competing virtually on MyWhoosh will have to be ready to provide blood and urine samples, as the indoor cycling platform rolls out a first-of-its-kind anti-doping testing programme.
We’ve seen virtual riding platforms such as MyWhoosh and Zwift aim to crack down on ‘robo-doping’, where riders digitally manipulate their performance data, but this is a new regime to test riders for physically doping, based on the World Anti-Doping Agency’s (WADA) Prohibited List of banned performance-enhancing substances.
The testing programme will apply to the MyWhoosh virtual events that offer significant prize money, most notably the Sunday Race Club, where weekly prize purses run into the tens of thousands of dollars. MyWhoosh indicated that “as prize-money events continue to grow” it’s becoming increasingly aware of the need to “ensure that competition results reflect genuine performance”.
How will it actually work?
For relevant races, riders will be required to declare their exact physical location in advance of the event. If selected for testing, they must remain at their declared location for up to three hours after the race, during which the testers would come round to collect a sample.
A rider could be notified of an impeding test shortly before, during or immediately after the event.
Samples to be taken could include urine, a blood sample collected from a vein, or a dried blood spot sample taken from a finger-prick.
Selection for testing is at MyWhoosh’s discretion and could be both random and targeted. The platform says results, performance data, and even intelligence could help target the testing but that racers could equally be selected at random.
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