在奥运会上，多快算太快？在*游泳运动员叶诗文于周六打破女子400米个人混合泳的*记录后，这个问题一直困扰着这位十六岁的小将。赛后，一些游泳老师质疑叶诗文是不是靠*成绩的药物才获胜的。
在奥运会上，多快算太快？在*游泳运动员叶诗文于周六打破女子400米个人混合泳的*记录后，这个问题一直困扰着这位十六岁的小将。赛后，一些游泳质疑叶诗文是不是靠*成绩的药物才获胜的。在药检中她的任何一项违禁物质都未呈阳性，而国际奥委会在周二宣布她的赛后药检是没有问题的。对于结果的争论掺杂了种族和政治，但却鲜有科学。而《自然》将要检验运动员的历史成绩和人类的生理极限可否并且如何运用到揪出违规者上。
Was Ye’s performance anomalous?
叶诗文的表现很反常吗？
Yes. Her time in the 400 IM was more than 7 seconds faster than her time in the same event at a major meet in July. But what really raised eyebrows was her showing in the last 50 metres, which she swam faster than US swimmer Ryan Lochte did when he won gold in the men’s 400 IM on Saturday, with the second-fastest time ever for that event.
是的。她在400米个人混合泳中的表现比她七月在一项重要赛事的相同项目中的快了七秒。但是真正让人吃惊的是她在*后50米的表现，在这50米中她甚至比夺得男子400米个人混合泳*的美国选手瑞恩.罗切特还快，而后者是该项目历史第二快的。
是的。她在400米个人混合泳中的表现比她七月在一项重要赛事的相同项目中的快了七秒。但是真正让人吃惊的是她在*后50米的表现，在这50米中她甚至比夺得男子400米个人混合泳*的美国选手瑞恩.罗切特还快，而后者是该项目历史第二快的。
Doesn't a clean drug test during competition rule out the possibility of doping?
在比赛期间的药检无问题可以排除用药的嫌疑吗？
No, says Ross Tucker, an exercise physiologist at the University of Cape Town in South Africa. Athletes are much more likely to dope while in training, when drug testing tends to be less rigorous. “Everyone will pass at the Olympic games. Hardly anyone fails in competition testing,” Tucker says.
Out-of-competition tests are more likely to catch dopers, he says, but it is not feasible to test every elite athlete regularly year-round. Tracking an athlete over time and flagging anomalous performances would help anti-doping authorities to make better use of resources, says Yorck Olaf Schumacher, an exercise physiologist at the Medical University of Freiburg in Germany, who co-authored a 2009 paper proposing that performance profiling be used as an anti-doping tool1. “I think it’s a good way and a cheap way to narrow down a large group of athletes to suspicious ones, because after all, the result of any doping is higher performance,” Schumacher says.
The ‘biological passport’, which measures characteristics of an athlete’s blood to look for physiological evidence of doping, works in a similar way to performance profiling (see 'Racing just to keep up'). After it was introduced in 2008, cycling authorities flagged irregularities in the blood characteristics of Antonio Colom, a Spanish cyclist, and targeted drug tests turned up evidence of the banned blood-boosting hormone erythropoietin (EPO) in 2009.
不，南非开普敦大学的运动生理学家罗斯.塔克如此回答。运动员更有可能在训练期间用药，在此期间的药检的严格程度会低的多。“奥运会上谁都能通过，基本上没人在比赛期间的药检中落马，”塔克说道。
赛外药检更容易抓住服药者，他说道，但是全年都对每名*运动员进行药检是不可行的。对一名运动员进行长时间追踪并且标出反常表现也许会对反禁药机构更合理的利用他们的资源有所帮助，德国弗赖堡医中心的运动生理学家约克.奥拉夫.舒马赫说。在2009年他曾经与人合作完成一篇论文，在文中提出成绩仿形可以被用作反禁药工具。“我认为这是一条有效廉价的将庞大的运动员群体范围缩小到几个可疑者的途径，因为毕竟，任何禁药的结果带来的都是更好的成绩，”舒马赫说。
测量运动员血液特征以寻找用药的生理学证据的“生物护照”和成绩仿形的原理是相似的（参见：Racing just to keep up）。在其于2008年被引入后，2009年，自行车机构从安东尼奥.科洛姆，一名西班牙车手的血液特征中发现了异常，在随后针对其进行的药检中发现了可以促进血液循环的禁药促红细胞生成素（EPO）。
How would performance be used to nab dopers?
如何用成绩来抓住用药者？
Anti-doping authorities need a better way of flagging anomalous performances or patterns of results, says Schumacher. To do this, sports scientists need to create databases that — sport by sport and event by event — record how athletes improve with age and experience. Longitudinal records of athletes’ performances would then be fed into statistical models to determine the likelihood that they ran or swam too fast, given their past results and the limits of human physiology.
The Olympic biathlon, a winter sport that combines cross-country skiing and target shooting, has dabbled in performance profiling. In a pilot project, scientists at the International Biathlon Union in Salzburg, Austria, and the University of Ferrara in Italy, developed a software program that retroactively analysed blood and performance data from 180 biathletes over six years to identify those most likely to have doped2. The biathlon federation now uses the software to target its athletes for drug testing.
反禁药机构需要更有效的方法来标记出异常表现或成绩样本，舒马赫说。要想做到这点，体育科学家们需要按照体育和项目类别建立数据库，记录下运动员随年龄和经验增长时其水平的*。此时，有了他们过去的成绩和人类生理极限的帮助，运动员成绩的纵向记录就可以代入到统计模型中，来判定他们跑或游到这么快的可能性。
奥运会的冬季两项比赛，一项将越野滑雪与射击结合起来的冬季运动，已经开始尝试使用成绩仿形。在一项试验性项目中，位于奥地利萨尔茨堡的国际冬季两项联合会和意大利费拉拉大学的科学家们开发了一款软件，可以追溯分析180名冬季两项运动员过去六年的血液和成绩数据，以找出那些*有可能服药的。冬季两项联合会现在使用该软件来选出那些需要药检的运动员。
Could an athlete then be disciplined simply for performing too well?
一名运动员应该仅仅因为表现的太好就受到惩罚吗？
“That would be unfair,” says Tucker. “The final verdict is only ever going to be reached by testing. It has to be.” In recent years, cycling authorities have successfully prosecuted athletes for having anomalous blood profiles, even when banned substances such as EPO could not be found. But performance is too far removed from taking a banned substance and influenced by too many outside factors to convict someone of doping, Tucker says. “When we look at this young swimmer from China who breaks a world record, that’s not proof of anything. It asks a question or two.”
