Can UCI's Power Data Strategy Revolutionize Anti-Doping in Cycling?

The news that the UCI wants to use power data to detect doping gives the impression of a major step forward. However, the plan mainly raises old questions about measurement accuracy, transparency, and legal viability, states The Outer Line. Cycling has previously experienced how technical interventions by the governing body can falter in lawsuits and lead to reputational damage. Is power data a solution, or just another complex problem?

News landed last week that the UCI will be studying the feasibility of using cyclists’ power meter data to bolster doping detection. While that sounds progressive, it’s nothing new; physiology and medical experts have been pursuing this option for years. Using power data to provide a measure of changing rider performance first arose when limitations of the biological passport became clear.

Initially, it was medical treatment innovations that artificially elevated and/or held key biometric parameters above the athlete’s baseline norm so as to avoid detection. Later, such testing approaches became very expensive – for sport governance bodies and anti-doping agencies to litigate cases all the way up to the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS).

We first analyzed power’s potential in 2018, and the same challenges for adoption exist today – the most glaring of which are standardization of the measurement tool and centralization of the data and its detection algorithms. There can be wildly fluctuating results from the different power meters on the market; hence, any adoption of a power-based cheating detection methodology must be accompanied by a transparent vendor competition, so that performance measurements and data handling and storage procedures can be authenticated.

Tacitly, that power meter accuracy and reliability competition winner will artificially skew the market against its competitors, an outcome that will almost certainly land in litigation. And as the UCI discovered with its proposed gearing restriction and SRAM’s subsequent legal victory that effectively nixed the statute, meddling with the consumer product landscape is not a governing body’s strong suit.

The UCI provided no answers when we asked how it selected its “safety tracking” technology device and vendor last year – an equally consequential technical decision impacting the sport’s integrity. Hence, we’re not holding our breath that any further technical assessment details are forthcoming. Doping news has been thin in pro cycling over the past few seasons, with just a few low level blemishes hovering below the scandal threshold.

Could the adoption of power as a detection tool cast a better net? As mentioned, the cost of litigation is increasing, not only to adjudicate the anti-doping cases but also the potential for lawsuits against sporting bodies by athletes exonerated in the Swiss court – in addition to consequences measured by reduced fan trust, drop in viewership, and loss of sponsor investment. There is other low-hanging fruit in the anti-doping battleground which is not being effectively used, such as drug anti-diversion efforts that can pinpoint doping medication sources and lead directly to teams and individual athletes.

Even so, the addition of power as a detection method should be welcomed if effectively implemented; with the Enhanced Games about to blur the lines between natural sport and cultural acceptance of doping, anything that cycling can do to promote the image of clean competition should be adopted before the narrative changes.

This article was written by the American platform The Outer Line (by Steve Maxwell, Joe Harris, and Spencer Martin), with which Cyclingflash.com has a partnership. The Outer Line publishes in-depth articles and commentary on the economics, governance, structure, and competition of professional cycling. They also have good contacts in the anti-doping world and regularly write eye-opening stories.