ADELAIDE, Australia – Australian researchers say current controls on drug use in sports are doomed to fail and performed largely for show.

The University of Adelaide study — titled “Anti-doping systems in sports are doomed to fail: a probability and cost analysis”— examining worldwide data of positive doping tests from 93 sports, found that single, random drug tests caught cheats only 2.9 per cent of the time. For a 100 per cent rate, all athletes would need to be tested up to 50 times a year.

“The current system of anti-doping testing is inadequate to eliminate doping,” study co-author professor Maciej Henneberg said in a statement Friday. “It appears that anti-doping policies are in place more for perception, to show that the right thing is being done. In practice … the anti-doping system is doomed to fail.”

Henneberg said if athletes were tested 12 times a year, their odds of being caught was only 33 per cent, assuming they were continuously using a banned substance.

“But we know that athletes don’t continuously use performance enhancing drugs, they have increasingly sophisticated techniques to avoid detection,” Henneberg said.