Of a total of 101 samples tested by the Mexican National Commission for Physical Education and Sport, 73 of those samples, amounting to 72% of the total tested, provided Adverse Analytical Findings (AAFs) as reported in the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) Testing Figures Report 2013.

Convert these totals to the number of Anti-Doping Rule Violations (ADRVs) resulting in sanctions, and the figure falls to just two of the 101 samples tested.

Such figures are reminiscent of the clenbuterol affair in 2011, in which five Mexican footballers tested positive for the banned substance. WADA decided to withdraw its appeal at the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) deciding not sanction the players due to ‘compelling evidence’ indicating that there was a ‘serious health problem in Mexico with regards to meat contaminated with clenbuterol’ – and one which they acknowledged as a public health issue needing urgent attention from the Mexican Government.

Mexico’s AAFs percentage provides alarming reading at first sight and brings Mexico to the top of the table for the percentage AAFs to Total Samples Tested. Mexico’s position atop this ignominious table does also highlight the need for clarity in the figures presented and for further explanation.

As with the percentage ADRVs per total samples tested, when the figures are adjusted to include only those National Anti-Doping Organisations (NADOs) in which more than 1,000 samples were collected, the data provides for very different reading.

The Turkish NOC- Anti-Doping Commission is the only NADO in the top ten with the highest percentage of ADRVs per total test samples whose sample size reached over 1,000. The National Anti-Doping Agency of Tunisia’s results, for example, in which 7 samples produced both five AAFs and five ADRVs, provides a huge percentage of positive results but arguably skews the figures making them incomparable to those NADOs testing thousands of samples.

The Russian National Anti-Doping Organization, who tested 14,582 samples returning 184 ADRVs, breach the top 10 NADOs for percentage ADRVs to total samples tested when the tables are adjusted for only those NADOs conducting more than 1,000 samples, but feature a long way off on the raw data.

Mexico aside, the conversion of AAFs to ADRVs and therefore those samples resulting in sanctions following analogous results, remains reasonably true. All NADOs whose percentage ADRVs to total samples provided the top ten percentages of NADOs were in the top 20 NADOs for percentage AAFs to total samples. A full 29 NADOs provided a 100% conversion rate when it came to the percentage AAFs to ADRVs.

At the other end of the data it is Japan and Germany’s NADOs which provide the lowest percentage of ADRVs per total test samples. These figures could be interpreted in any number of ways. It could be that the low number of positive results show that testing is not targeted well enough and, therefore the targeting of athletes is not very effective. Equally the testing may in itself be ineffective, failing to detect the true number of adverse findings that better testing may otherwise pick up. On the other hand, those figures could show that the athletes from those countries are receiving excellent anti-doping education.

In what WADA has termed the ‘most comprehensive set of doping statistics to-date’ the release of these figures is a positive step in its efforts to represent a ‘robust annual compilation of ADRVs worldwide’.

However as WADA concedes, the information received from the WADA Code signatories are results in which the NADOs themselves are responsible for the results management of doping cases. What the data does not portray is the variation in standards and methods of compilation by each individual NADO. To fully understand what the results mean they will need to be supplemented with further statistics, studies and explanations of the results.