TADP (ITF) 2018 Per Player Testing Statistics

Once again another important testing statistic has only been released after I specifically asked about it. The 2018 player-by-player testing summary shows how often individual players have been tested (i.e. how many samples have been collected) both in and out of competition under the TADP in 2018, excluding any testing done by NADOs. Interestingly, this time the report does give exact numbers instead of the usual testing ranges, which makes the whole report a lot more interesting. Therefore some quick observations can be made:

(1) In the vast majority of cases there are more OOC tests than IC if there are OOC tests at all. It should be mentioned, however, that Athlete Biological Passport (ABP) testing is mostly done OOC, which alone accounts for roughly a third of all OOC tests. Still, it is worth mentioning given that the overall number of IC outweighs the number of OOC tests (see the 2018 report).

(2) It is also worth mentioning that top players (i.e. rank wise) are not tested more frequently than much lower ranked players. For example, journeymen like Kukushkin, Pouille or Sousa get tested more frequently than Djokovic, Federer or Nadal. It’s similar on the women’s side — not only did Serena Williams get tested less often than her lower ranked sister, she also got tested less than a player like Vondrousova. Oddities like this can’t be explained by Williams playing less events as it’s not the number of IC tests but the number of OOC tests that’s the outlier (compare, for instance, Puig’s 3 IC/16 OOC tests with Williams’ 3 IC/10 OOC tests). Then again a highly ranked and very active player like Thiem has 13 IC/17 OOC tests, yet the even higher ranked and and not much less active Djokovic only got 9 IC/12 OOC tests.

(3) It’s difficult to find a pattern with regard to testing frequency in general. Rank (as seen above) doesn’t seem to be a major factor (if at all). The number of events participated in appears to only influence the number of IC tests. The only factor that seems to have at least some degree of influence on testing frequency is doping violation history: Players like Errani or Gasquet got tested fairly frequently considering their ranking and the number of events they participated in.

(4) Finally, the overall number of tests is stunningly low. For example, Nadal was tested exactly 4 times in competition during the whole season. Given that he attended 13 events in total during the 2018 season he was therefore not tested at all at 9 out of the 13 events he participated in, which means that he only get tested at roughly 30% of the tournaments he played. The numbers for other top ranked players like Djokovic (56%) or Federer (46%) are similarly embarrassing. It should be the bare minimum for a top contender in professional sports to get tested at least once at every event he or she attends, but not in tennis.