UFC and USADA Extended Contract, Testing To Increase • MMA News

UFC and USADA Extended Contract, Testing To Increase • MMA News

Regardless of hypothesis on the contrary, UFC and USADA’s partnership is as sturdy as ever and will proceed for the foreseeable future.

Stories of Jon Jones’s atypical check consequence from December ninth have generated extra questions than solutions about USADA’s testing coverage and the athlete sanctioning course of. And when a whole UFC card is relocated because of that course of, solutions should be expedited. UFC’s Vice President of Athlete Well being and Efficiency Jeff Novitzky appeared on “The Joe Rogan Experience” podcast to supply some solutions, together with Jon Jones’s testing frequency and the place issues stand between USADA and the UFC (Transcript by way of MMAjunkie):

“The reality, and [USADA representatives] just told me this, is Jon was one of the most, if not the most tested athlete over these last six months when you look at total amount of tests on his samples,” Novitzky informed Rogan. “One factor that clearly protected him right here was that quantity of testing, and so USADA got here to us and mentioned, ‘Hey, we think that you probably should up the amount of tests that you’re doing.’ So we simply renewed a contract with USADA and we’re growing our testing numbers by 30 to 40 p.c.

“The first three years of the program, we were under contract for approximately 2,700 tests, and starting this next year, we’re going to up that to around 4,300 or 4,400 tests. So I think it’s going to be more of a burden. There’s going to be USADA showing up on more doorsteps early in the morning for more of our athletes, but I think this is a perfect example that the increased volume of testing actually can be a protectant to the athlete, especially when you’re talking these low level picogram quantities and contaminated cases, and things like that.”

As for the atypical check results of Jon Jones that induced the relocation of UFC 232, Novitzky believes that it’s a signal of the instances and how a lot drug testing has developed:

“If I would’ve talked to you 15, 16, 17 years ago when I got my start in the anti-doping world, I would’ve told you definitively that testing is way behind what’s being used out there,” Novitzky mentioned. “They have been capable of check to a number of nanograms limits, that’s as far down as they may go. Now we are able to go right down to single-digit picogram. There’s one other skilled sports activities league on the market that just lately had a one picogram M3 metabolite case. I imply, do the maths coming down from 4 or 5 nanograms, which was the decrease restrict, now to 1 picogram — 10,000 or 20,000 instances [smaller].

“I am almost under the theory that the pendulum has swung maybe a little bit too far in the other direction, and that certainly is part of my job to the UFC. Look, I want to catch every intentional cheater that’s out there. I want to make sure we have a rock-solid program, use all the latest and greatest techniques to do it, but I also want to keep an eye on it to make sure it’s administrated fairly. And when you’re getting down to detection of one single-digit picogram, I have a concern that what kind of level of sensitivity are we talking about?”

Do you assume the UFC persevering with its partnership with USADA was the proper transfer to make?

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