WADA Is Collecting More Samples, But the Curve Is Flattening: Reading the 2026 Report Through Data

Late last week I sat up until nearly midnight in my small Melbourne apartment, reading the World Anti-Doping Agency's 2026 annual report end to end. What made me stop was not the 297,965 samples collected during 2026, but the distance between that figure and the 288,865 of the year before — barely 9,100 additional samples. A year earlier, WADA reported growth of 12.5 percent. This time, the pace falls to 3.2 percent. After more than a decade tracking anti-doping data cycles, I hold to one rule: when an organisation markets itself with the phrase "expanded testing" while the curve is flattening, the real story sits in the footnotes, not the headline.

I should be clear from the outset that this report belongs to cross-sport governance, not to swimming technique. WADA sets anti-doping rules for every sport, funded by the International Olympic Committee and national governments. The 2026 annual report it has just published actually summarises testing activity from 2026 and 2026, with a publication lag of roughly one year — a convention worth remembering before quoting any figure. The data series I worked from runs from 2026 to 2026, and it exposes a system under twin pressure: widening its testing footprint while confronting financial and compliance gaps that are becoming harder to hide.

The first point worth noting is the growth rate of testing. From 2026 to 2026, total samples rose 12.5 percent. From 2026 to 2026, growth was only 3.2 percent, lifting the total to 297,965. This is the kind of curve I call flattened growth — still positive, but out of momentum. When I look at the chart WADA published for 2026–2026, this loss of momentum is not statistical noise; it lines up with another reality recorded in the report's financial section.

But the metric I trust most is the Adverse Analytical Finding rate — the formal positive test. Across three years it ran 0.77 percent, 0.80 percent and 0.78 percent, sitting inside a 0.03 percentage-point band. A detection rate holding steady near 0.78 percent while testing volume rises is the single most analytically robust finding in the entire report — stable enough to treat as a genuine baseline signal rather than random movement. The data cannot separate two possibilities: either underlying doping prevalence is stable, or the widening testing net is reaching a population with a comparable positivity rate. Both are reasonable answers, and both deserve continued watching.

I learned to read metrics like these in the COVID-era laboratory, working with Dr Emily Chen on ground contact times among hurdlers. We found that champion Celeste Mucci averaged 0.088 seconds of ground contact — 0.012 seconds longer than the theoretical optimum, a technical gap nobody noticed because her results still looked good. The COVID laboratory taught me that data feels pain — if only we listen. That is also how I read the 0.78 percent AAF rate: a mirror reflecting the limits of the testing system, not a neutral figure.

The second section of the report is where the cracks show. WADA conducted nine compliance audits, and average non-conformities fell from 25.5 to 20 — which sounds like progress. Dig deeper and the picture reverses: testing-related non-conformities account for 45 percent of all findings, up 11 percent year on year, with 23 percent graded critical. In other words, national anti-doping organisations are improving in auxiliary areas while weakening at the core function: sample collection. With only nine audits, the improvement from 25.5 to 20 is statistically fragile — I would not use it to assert anything with confidence.

For swimming, this is an indirect but worrying signal. Swimming is testing-intensive, with multi-event sampling programmes running year round, and it depends on well-funded national agencies. If that 45 percent compliance problem concentrates in low-resource countries — the report does not say — then developing swimming federations are the most exposed group. This is low-confidence inference, but it is the only route connecting a cross-sport governance report to the sport I follow.

The financial section is where I lingered longest. WADA recorded a shortfall of 8.3 million dollars against budget. The United States withheld 3.8 million dollars; Russia withheld 3.9 million dollars. What made me read twice was the coexistence of two seemingly contradictory figures: a net surplus of 1.2 million dollars, and a shortfall that large. The only way both exist is aggressive cost control or deferred spending — and in the near term, that may be precisely what is suppressing investment in testing.

Meanwhile, WADA is shifting focus from traditional testing toward investigations and prevention. It reported more than 250 investigations, 88 laboratories dismantled and over 90 tonnes of substances seized. This is a strategic reorientation, not a decorative statistic. Every record is a confirmed hypothesis; every failure is an equation awaiting a second solution — and here, the equation is being resolved toward smarter rather than more. For sports like swimming, where out-of-competition testing is the primary shield, shifting resources toward investigations means quality over quantity — a reasonable bet, but still a bet.

The rare bright spot lies in process. WADA and its Athlete Council ran an athlete-centred consultation involving more than 600 athletes and commissions from over 60 countries and more than 70 sports. The 2027 World Anti-Doping Code was adopted in Busan, South Korea, and takes effect on 1 January 2027. That is a dated milestone any federation can plan around. But the report offers no measure showing that athlete input actually changed the substance of the Code. The participation numbers are impressive; the impact is unproven.

This is where I want to push back on the common reading. The report was summarised as "WADA increases testing," and one author even called it "a win for WADA." The data does not support that optimism. Growth is decelerating, the detection rate is flat, testing non-conformities are rising, and the two largest contributors are withholding payment. The railway behind Risdon leads nowhere — that emptiness tells the whole story better than the finish line. I learned this from Australia's 1-2 defeat to France in Kazan in 2026: the space behind a full-back who ran 9.8 kilometres is not an individual failure but a systemic gap. The same applies here: the issue is not whether WADA tests more or less, but whether the system has enough resources to guarantee uniform fairness.

There is a temptation when reading reports like this: reduce everything to a single variable. But the Gatlin–Coleman equation taught me that speed is never a single variable. In 2026, analysing the men's 100m final in London, I noted Gatlin's reaction time of 0.138 seconds against Coleman's 0.116 — Coleman was faster. But Gatlin's stride frequency reached 5.2 Hz during acceleration, 0.4 Hz higher, and that decided the race. An anti-doping system runs the same way: sample counts are only one variable, and the decisive one may lie in financial capacity, audit quality, or the compliance level of individual countries.

The window between now and 1 January 2027 is a worrying one. Old rules remain in force, agencies face no pressure to convert, and compliance incentives may temporarily weaken. This is the kind of gap I have seen across sport for years: when new law is not yet applied and old law has lost credibility, behaviour drifts toward the loosest option. Nothing in the report suggests WADA has the resources to police that transition tightly.

WADA has a net surplus, an expanding investigations mechanism and a newly adopted Code. It also has a flattening testing curve, a rising wave of non-conformity, and two of its largest contributors withholding payment. For those of us who follow swimming, the question is not how many samples are collected, but whether every athlete, in every country, receives the same level of scrutiny. I do not believe in luck; I believe in the track each athlete chooses to rise from — but that track is only fair when every athlete runs on the same surface.