More than 30% of athletes who competed at the 2011 World Championships "admitted to having used banned substances in the past," a World Anti-Doping Agency-commissioned study revealed on Tuesday, according to Karolos Grohmann of REUTERS. The study, conducted by researchers from Germany's University of Tuebingen and Harvard Medical School in '11, found that more than 30% of world championship participants and more than 45% of athletes at the 2011 Pan-Arab Games said that they "had taken banned drugs." The researchers asked a total of 2,167 athletes whether they had used banned substances. A combined total of 5,187 athletes competed at those two events. The 2011 World Athletics Championships were held in Daegu, South Korea, while Qatar hosted the Pan-Arab Games that year. More than 90% of the athletes who were asked to take part agreed to do so. Only 0.5% of drugs tests in Daegu were positive, while the figure was 3.6% at the Pan-Arab Games. The study's release had been "delayed for years as the researchers wrangled with" WADA and the IAAF "over how it was to be published," researchers said (REUTERS, 8/29).
