Virtually all competitive sports involve drug testing in many of their events. In most cases, although some may argue this point, it is a fact that the vast majority of the competitors have been using, or are still using at the point of the competition, performance enhancing drugs. It is simply human nature in a highly competitive athlete to find an ‘edge’ over his or her competition, and this often comes in pharmaceutical form, coupled with a plan of action to ‘beat the test’.

You will find in certain competing sports such as power lifting and body-building that almost every competitor is drug tested. This is so that they are all competing on a par except for the natural talent level of course, but if the truth were to be revealed; it’s the guy who takes steroids and who knows how to cheat the test, who actually ends up winning. “That’s not fair” you’re saying…Well maybe it isn’t, but that’s just what these sports have become and there’s no turning back.

Some people may find the practice of using drugs to prepare for a ‘natural’ event rather unsavory. Personally, I neither condemn or condone such a deed; its entirely the business of the individual, and its also up to them to realize that if they get caught, it might just cause them a few problems… Aside from that, the principles behind evading a drug test are quite interesting in their own right. In this article, I will deal with some types of testing procedure and straight forward methods that can be employed to beat them.

Types of Testing Procedure: During athletics meetings the more common body fluid that is tested for the presence of drugs is normally urine. We will be concentrating on dealing with the different procedures that are carried out to test this body fluid, although such procedures carried out to assess blood for the presence of illegal substances are practically the same.

Different laboratory testing processes are employed in the testing for performance enhancers so we are going to focus on just how they work in order to be able to beat them. Step 1 will be well prior to your event, that you find out which type of sample analysis is to be employed so that an effective planning to beat the test can begin as soon as possible.

Gas Chromatography(GC): This method uses a separation technique to divide a urine extract into its component chemical parts. These substances are carried through chromatographic columns by a gas: chromatography is simply a means of separating mixtures of compounds from each other, and enables identification in many cases. The chemical compounds in the urine are identified by their ‘retention time’ on the chromatographic column – the retention time is unique for each drug, and so enables identification.

Gas Chromatography/Mass Spectrometry(GC/MS): This technique uses a combination of gas chromatography, followed by mass spectrometry on the chemicals separated out of the urine on the chromatographic column. The mass spectrometry allows exact identification of the drugs present in the urine by actually giving an exact ‘molecular fingerprint’ of the chemicals present. That is to say the chemical structure of the drugs present (the atoms present in the drug, and in the order they are bonded together) is given by this method. This is a very expensive test to use, and it could be stated that only sporting organisations with plenty of cash to hand would use it. The test’s cost is about one hundred pounds or so per sample (about $200 US).

It goes without saying that we have just covered two pretty reasonably accurate tests, but you can always expect a certain degree of human error. One of the most common would be that of poor cleaning after testing, whereby contamination could lead to the next person to be tested to get an incorrect result. So bearing this in mind should you ever come out positive when you think you shouldn’t have, well make sure you put in a protest.

High Performance Liquid Chromatography(HPLC): This technique is extremely interesting as it tends to be used on test samples that are suspected of having anabolic steroids present. It’s quite similar to GC, apart from that a liquid is used as a carrier for the sample through a chromatographic column, and not a gas. HPLC is both sensitive and a lot easier to carry out than GC. This test is often carried out on results that have already come from less sensitive ones.