How Not to Drug Test

Leave the dead guys alone

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Elite athletes get tested for drugs all the time, not that it matters so completely. Some leagues and associations look for offenders, some try really hard not to find any offenders — you know the drill. The business of top-level sports is business, and that doesn’t really change from season to season.

So for good or ill, Norway’s national soccer team is a fair target for a test every now and then. The roster, after all, includes Erling Haaland and Oscar Bobb, and they both play for Manchester City apart from repping the Norwegian nationals. You have a team with international stars, you can expect the occasional knock at the door.

But when Norway’s anti-doping agency showed up this week, the list was longer and fairly star-studded. It included Jorgen Juve and Einar Gundersen. Huge names in Norway soccer. Juve is the country’s all-time leading scorer, Gundersen a stalwart member of the national team.

For those guys, Juve and Gundersen, to show up on the doping test list was significant. It may even have signaled a shift in the testing policy. Everyone in the country took notice and began talking when the news broke that those names were included, which may have been the message.

I mean, they’re both dead. But you can’t have everything.

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Jorgen Juve died in 1983. Gundersen, so famous in his time on the national team, has been gone lo these many decades, having passed in 1962.

That is one tough doping agency.

Norway’s national team manager, Stale Solbakken, told reporters that when the names were announced inside the locker room, he started looking around for a hidden camera — he figured he was the butt of a practical joke.

What actually happened, apparently, is that the doping agency went straight to the list of the country’s leading scorers, figuring they were all good targets for testing. Seems like a perfectly fine way to identify the top talent, assuming you also look at birth and death dates. The agency folks didn’t.

"We had a visit from Anti-Doping Norway [on Tuesday]," Norway manager Solbakken said. "The following players were selected for testing: Erling Braut Haaland, Jørgen Strand Larsen, Antonio Nusa, Oscar Bobb, Einar Gundersen and Jorgen Juve.

"Then I start to wonder. So we called [the agency]. These were the names that were read out, and it was serious. So Einar Gundersen and Jorgen Juve were summoned. It was a bit late. Negative tests on both of them."

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According to the the Norwegian news agency NTB, the good people at Anti-Doping Norway said they’re working to clarify how Juve and Gundersen ended up on the list. That sounds like a tremendous question.

"It's hard to say what happened, but normally we hit the target better," said the agency’s communications director, earning his keep at a furious pace.

None the worse for wear. Continue with enthusiasm, everybody.