Published June 8, 2026 09:20AM
Testing athletes for banned substances on race day isn’t that difficult. Ensuring that they’re clean the other 364 days of the year is another story.
The trouble is that athletes only spend a tiny fraction of their lives in the arena. The rest of the time, they’re moving about the world unscrutinized, living and training behind closed doors. That adds up to millions of hours of unobserved downtime. Which begs the question: How is enforcement even possible?
That’s the question the international anti-doping industry has had to ask itself after every headlining scandal. While some groups (see: the 2026 Enhanced Games) have advocated giving up on enforcement entirely, most of the sporting world has doggedly accepted it as a reality of modern athletics.
Today, the international anti-doping machine has settled on a solution that functions something like a collaborative international spy network: a global army of doping control officers (DCO).
These are the people who show up at your house unannounced, in the small hours of the morning or in the moments before you crawl into bed at night. They come to your gym, walk into your living room, and show up at your kid’s birthday party.
Once they see you, you’re not allowed to leave their sight until you provide a sample. About to sit down to dinner? Not so fast. About to officiate your brother’s wedding? The DCO gets to come with. Until they’ve got their test tube of blood or their cup of pee, they’re not going anywhere.
Not every athlete gets sampled, but the threat of constant testing is critical. After all, the real enforcement isn’t about the cup or the syringe; it’s about the fear.
As you might expect, working as an agent of fear can be a thankless job. The DCOs I’ve interviewed have been greeted at the door with loaded guns. They’ve had the police called on them. They’ve had to chase evasive athletes around strange cities, fly into war zones, and carry samples across borders. They’re frontline workers in Palestine and Ukraine.
And yet, there’s no glory to it. It can be pretty awkward, and it’s not incredibly well paid. But those who do this work call it more vocation than side gig. It’s not about the money or even the travel. It’s about being a part of something: the scaffolding of international sport, a cog in the gleaming machine. It’s about watching an athlete stream tears of joy over a world record that was decades in the making—and knowing that you helped prove to the world that it was real.
We spoke to a lifelong DCO to find out what that really looks like behind the scenes.
The Gig at a Glance
Job: Doping control officer for the International Testing Agency (ITA)
Age: Mid-fifties
Years in the Business: 35
Pay: $40 to $80 per hour
Why Did You Become a Doping Control Officer?
I was a physical therapy student in 1990, and the World Student Games were coming to town. My class was asked if anyone wanted a summer job as an “independent sampling officer.” It sounded alright, so I applied.
Once I started, it just kind of got under my skin. It felt like such important work. I saw so many athletes training so hard, and I wanted to do all I could to make sure those people competed on as level a playing field as I could possibly create. I became a physical therapist and then an airline pilot but always kept working in anti-doping on the side. I still do that today, and I absolutely love it.
Your Day Job Is Pretty Lucrative. Why Do You Moonlight as a DCO?
I don’t know many people who do this for the money. They mostly do it because seeing how international sport ticks behind the scenes is pretty impressive. You can find yourself at a major event like the Olympics or the Tour de France, and you pinch yourself. Knowing you played one small part in that—it’s absolutely magic.
Part of Your Job Is to Arrive at Athletes’ Homes Unannounced. How Do People Typically React to That?
Compared to 20 or 30 years ago, the reaction nowadays is extremely professional. Most athletes deal with testing as a little bump in the road and just take it in their stride. Other times, you might arrive on a difficult day because the athlete has so much planned. They might have a wedding to go to that day. They might be on their way to a funeral.
The rule is that I can wait as long as I need to do my test. I can sit and watch you train. I can go to your event with you. I can attend your wife’s doctor’s appointment. As long as I can see you, I’m happy. We can almost always find a way to work around the athlete’s schedule.
Things do get more interesting when you arrive at an athlete’s home at 6 A.M. The local neighborhood is often quite aware of people sitting in their car and looking at a particular house. They don’t know I’m not a burglar, and I’ve certainly had the police called on me.
Have You Ever Had to Attend a Wedding or Funeral in Pursuit of a Sample?
I nearly had to go to a wedding. I arrived to do my test, and everyone was very smartly dressed and preparing to leave for the ceremony. Fortunately the athlete was well-hydrated and able to pee before the car needed to leave.
Another time, I went to an athlete’s home, and his wife told me he’d gone out to dinner. She gave me directions to the restaurant, and I had to go and sit at the edge of the table at dinner with him and his friends until he was ready to give a sample. It was quite awkward.
How Did You Track Athletes Down Before the Internet?
These days, there’s an app and a centralized digital system, and athletes provide a one-hour slot every day when they will be available at a specified location. They can be tested at any time, but they have to be where they say they’ll be during that one hour.
Thirty years ago, we didn’t have all that. We were just given an athlete’s general whereabouts—and five days to find them.
Back then, my first task when I went to a new town was to buy an atlas. Sometimes I’d stop and ask a local post office person because they always knew all the roads. Other DCOs would talk to pizza delivery people for the same reason.
In most places, I could be pretty resourceful and find the right address. But there are some countries that don’t have address systems. I remember going to Japan and being completely lost. Their system is so different that only the Japanese DCOs could find their way around.
What Is the Collection Process Actually Like?
The athlete is in charge of everything. They choose their collection vessel and perform the test. We just observe and talk them through it.
We go to the bathroom and the athlete washes their hands. They then expose their body from mid chest to mid thigh so there’s an unobstructed view of the sample being collected. That’s to make sure the sample has integrity and isn’t compromised.
Once the cup is full or the bladder empty, the lid goes on the cup. They can get dressed and we go back into the room to do the paperwork. We record the total volume, and then the athlete divides the sample into the bottles labeled A and B. Once the lid clicks onto those bottles, they can’t be opened. My job is then to ship these to the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) accredited laboratory for testing.
Is the Work as Thankless as It Sounds?
The challenge for me has always been trying to take anti-doping—which is a very procedural, technical, boring, irritating job—and try to make it as athlete-friendly as possible. I want to comply with the rules so that the athlete leaves feeling that the test was done properly and we all did the best we could.
We’re not police officers. We’re not trying to catch people out; we’re trying to give the athletes the opportunity to prove that they compete clean.
Are Some Athletes More Difficult than Others?
Cycling has always been very professional. Anti-doping is absolutely integrated in their field of normal. Cyclists also tend to be very hydrated so they pee very quickly—usually it’s 10 or 15 minutes in and out.
Some sports are more challenging because they’re weight-limited. Jockeys, judo players, and weight lifters who’ve got specific weight targets don’t want to drink anything because they don’t want to be too heavy. So that gets interesting.
What Are the Moments That Make It All Worth It?
I remember being at Super Saturday at the Olympics in London [when Team Great Britain won three gold medals in Track and Field in 44 minutes]. As a DCO, you’re right on the field, behind the main bench, next to the action. DCOs will say you cannot buy a ticket for the seats you get with this job. The roar in that stadium was spine-tingling.
I’ve been to two Olympic Games and a number of Commonwealth Games, and it’s a privilege to be at every one. It’s absolutely amazing.
