Kazakhstan Biathlon Team Raided For Suspicion of Doping Cleared to Compete

Remember the Kazakhstan biathlon team that got raided by Austrian police after throwing out a cardboard box filled with medical waste and potential doping instructions at a gas station a week ago? Good news, they've been cleared!

According to the BBC, the biathlon team has been cleared to compete in the World Championships after all the urine and blood samples taken during the raid came back negative, a result the Kazakh Olympic Committee said was "obvious and expected."

There's a lot we don't know at the moment—what medicines were left at the gas station, for example—but there are basically two possible scenarios, here: either the team gamed the testing or they weren't technically cheating. Neither scenario would be particularly surprising. Athletes have long been a step or two ahead of the testing, so it's hardly a shock that the tests came back negative. And we've known for some time that the most effective method of anti-doping is through investigative work, not blood or urine testing.

On the other hand, given the extensive Therapeutic Use Exemption system athletes have been known to abuse, it's entirely possible that they were, technically, not breaking the rules; that can be true even if the team was enlisting so much medical help that they aroused suspicion while disposing of it.

To be clear, the Austrian police have not cleared the team of anything. Their investigation is still ongoing. If nothing else, this whole episode underscores just how ineffective blood and urine tests really are at this whole clean sport thing.