Ali Jawad is a 4x Paralympian, 2016 Paralympic silver medallist, 2014 World Champion, 2 time Commonwealth Games Bronze Medallist at 2014/18, PhD candidate and Co-founder of Accessercise.

In this episode Ali discusses:

• Growing up as a double limb amputee.

• How “getting dragged to the gym” started his career in Paralympic powerlifting.

• His meteoric rise to international competition.

• The impact of Crohn’s disease on his body, mind and athletic career.

• How he and his support team learned to outsmart Crohn’s disease.

• The pinnacle of his career at Rio 2016 Games.

• His PhD research in antidumping in Paralympic sports.

• Why he founded the Accessorcise app specifically targeting the disable population.

You can listen to the episode in full here.

You can learn more about Ali via his Instagram account: @alijawadpowerlifter and more about Accessercise via @accessercise of download the app here: https://join.accessercise.com .

To learn more about the LTAD Network check out www.ltadnetwork.com or follow on Instagram: @ltadnetwork or Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ltadnetwork .

You can keep up to date with Athletic Evolution via our www.athleticevolution.co.uk , Instagram: @athleticevouk and Twitter: @athleticevouk .

Rob Anderson
Ali, welcome to the podcast. It’s awesome to be able to get you on mate.

Ali Jawad
Now, thanks for having me.

Rob Anderson
So before we dig into the Paralympic journey, and the various championships and medals and records, take us back to when you were much younger. What did physical activity look like for you as a youngster as a teenager and adolescent? What sort of things were you dabbling in?

Ali Jawad
Yeah, so to put it into context, I was born with a disability. So I’m a double leg amputee. So I’ve had it all my life. So for me, like I had to adapt a lot of my activity to kind of fit in. It’s quite strange, actually quite funny. But my first love of sport was football. And I used to always play in the playground with my friends. At Easter, obviously, they obviously allowed me to use my hands as my legs, which is cool. But then I was like, How can I become a footballer, if I’ve got no legs? And I realised, actually, that’s never going to happen. So from the very young age, I had to always adapt to kind of fit into playing sport. But I guess my, my kind of dream of getting to the Paralympic Games started when I watched the 96 Olympics in Atlanta. And I watched a man called I think a lot of people would know, Michael Johnson when his historic 200 or 400 metre gold medals. And I think for me, it was when he was on top of the podium, he was really emotional. And I wanted that feeling. And that’s when my kind of Paralympic kind of dream started when I was about six.

Rob Anderson
I remember wishing that race as well, actually, were both a 204 100 It was pretty dominant men. Yeah. So. So you’re obviously you know, this, this spark has been lit. You think cool. I want to get to that upper echelon of performance. When did like powerlifting arrived on the scene in your life and what how did you come across the path of it?

Ali Jawad
Yeah, so when I was 11, I started judo. I did it for four years and got to a very high standard, unfortunately, in the Paralympics. Because of my impairment. It wasn’t open to me. Judo is only open for visually impaired and blind athletes. So I actually had to quit judo when I was 15. Thinking that my Paralympic career was over. Coming from a Lebanese background and Arabic background, my parents were quite forceful in my academic academic prospects going forward. So don’t really see sport as as a way to have a career. So I focused on my GCSEs for a year. And it was actually during my GCSEs I think it was after my maths exam. My friend forced me like literally forced me to go to the gym across the road from my school. And this gym was pretty rundown, quite smelly, dusty day, Prop, like Rocky Bell war style, like gym, which I love, because I grew with the Rocky films. But it was actually I started that that day when I benchpress. My first lift was 100 kilo. And then yeah, the whole gym stopped, actually fought, I did something wrong, I fought, what have I done. And somebody came up to me and said, I need you to stay here. I need to go get somebody. And the owner of the gym came along and said to me, do you know what you’ve done? And I was like, no, he’s like, well, not many men can lift 100 kilo and their first ever attempt to the gym. And he said, You look what 1516 miles out. Yeah, he’s like, You have to come back. And that’s what happened.

Rob Anderson
That’s amazing. It’s a really interesting story, because I’m probably trying to get a lot of 1415 year old rugby players to stop trying to bench 100 Because they’re nowhere near it. So how much What do you think was the background to that? Because obviously, your body weight at that point in time would have were you around 56 Like what you are now or are you much lighter?

Ali Jawad
Now? It’s actually a little bit heavier. So it’s about maybe 6566 of the time. There was still no okay. benchpress for someone never touched away in their life.

Rob Anderson
100% So do you think you got a lot of carryover strength wise from just the daily tasks you had to do with someone as a double amputee having to you know, get around as you said, playing football, your hands you think that just built up this background of general strength?

Ali Jawad
Or massively I think, if I didn’t have legs, I wouldn’t be a good bench presser. I know that sounds weird. But when you’re spending all your life kind of climbing, supporting yourself transferring just in your arms, they also become your legs. So they’re doing like double the work. So I was always always had that foundation of strength without really knowing about it until I got tested in a in a in a gym environment where I’ve actually never been in before.

Rob Anderson
So how did that journey start to unfold? So you go in a mess in about a year with empower people start to thinking there’s something going on here. This is pretty interesting. There’s a guy with no legs. He’s benching 100 kilos, his first ever attempt. When did it start to become a more formal pathway? When did people start to say hey, you should come along to this training camp or you should come along to this competition.

Ali Jawad
Oh, straightaway. So, the owner of the the owner of the gym used to be the national coach of power powerlifting. And he said, there’s a competition in two weeks as the British, you’ve missed the deadline, but I can get you in. Also, I think you’ve got potential to get to the Paralympic Games. So it gave me another chance. And within two weeks, I competed at national level, I won the senior category, not just the junior category. And from there, obviously, Team GB were like, Yep, we’re nabbing him. And that’s how it that’s what happened. Literally, I got thrust into a world of elite sport quite quickly.

Rob Anderson
So what year are we talking that first British champs what year? Are we talking to you? 2005 2005. Right. So you’re starting to, you’re suddenly popped up on the radar. It’s funny when you speak to people about you know, that neuron was fairly similar, like, just randomly came across weightlifting, because the coach happened to come to the school. Like you, you know, what happens if your mayor never pulled you to the gym that day, or it was a different owner who wasn’t involved in the product setup? There’s so many weird little unfortunate events that happen. So you start to compete, you start to get noticed by Team GB. What’s this progression look like through the pathway for 14 GB Paralympic powerlifting.

Ali Jawad
Yeah, so because of my age being so young, and the sport back then was a, they call it an old person sport where, obviously to develop maximal strength, it takes a long time to develop, because I was such a junior juniors didn’t do very well at the senior level. So they said, Look, forget the Paralympic Games in Beijing are too young, because you’re about 18 months away. But maybe 2012 2016 is where we think you’re going to peak. So with that in mind, we committed to trading four times a week after school and college. So I started bands that out. And they weren’t really strict on my lifestyle, because they wanted me to enjoy it. They didn’t want to force me into a lifestyle where there was quite strict, especially at that age, which was good. So I was, I love training, I was still living my life out like outside of that still hanging out with mates and kind of doing both. The issue that I had was I was improving at a rate that nobody expected. And it got to a place where in the final qualifier for bait for the Beijing Paralympic Games, I was actually on the verge of making that team. So I actually had to make sure that was a lot stricter in my lifestyle, because I was on the verge of making it. So on the last day of qualifying for the games, I had to break the British senior record for the times to go, but I did it. And I got to go to Beijing and qualified in that top 10 men in the world that get to go

Rob Anderson
there what weight category we talked about at this point in time. So back

Ali Jawad
then, there was a 75 kilo class because of my add ons. So basically being an amputee, whatever I weighed, they add, they added weight to my legs that I was missing. So yeah, got me into the 75 kilo class. Right. Interesting. How do we figure that out? Yeah. To be fair, if I experience you will be here all day. They’ve tech they have taken out now, recently, but back then yeah, if you’re an amputee, you get weight added onto you. Yeah.

Rob Anderson
So. So you’re 75 to clasp your body weights. Actually. What did you say? 56?

Ali Jawad
No, that was 6566.

Rob Anderson
And what what sort of numbers? Are we talking about? benchpress at this point,

Ali Jawad
I had to I was 1819. And I benched to qualify for Beijing. A bench 280 kilo up at 92.180118. Now 180180. So I managed to get from 100 to 180 in about 18 months.

Rob Anderson
Yeah, which is I think most people add eight kilos eventually, in 18 months. I’m pretty chuffed. So one of the things that people may not realise until you dig into the world of Paralympic powerlifting is actually pound for pound Paralympic bench presses are far and away the best bench presses correct. Now even

Ali Jawad
pound for pound if you compare all the world records from mainstream powerlifting or able bodied powerlifting, to the power of powerlifting world records and the same bodyweight. We absolutely annihilate you guys. Actually, to be fair to put into context, that able bodied world record in my class would not even qualify for the Paralympic Games in eighth place.

Rob Anderson
Why do you why is that? What was their scientific reasoning? Or have you got your own explanation for that? What do you think it is?

Ali Jawad
There’s two reasons. One, a lot of the elite benches in the able bodied side have a squat and deadlift have to focus on so they’ve got three disciplines to really, you know, to, to actually train and to like for example, being an amputee means that I’ve had to compensate for having no lens on my life. So even though I I’ve got the ability to gain muscle in places and a will person probably can’t because they need legs, they’ve got legs, I haven’t got legs. So that muscle that I would have had on my legs, it’s on my arms, my triceps on my chest and my shoulders. So I look bigger than what my bodyweight would suggest.

Rob Anderson
So at this point in time, what’s the situation for you in terms of funding? Are you a fully funded athlete? Are you having to Pat find yourself to get around the world for competitions? What does that look like?

Ali Jawad
No, I was lucky that the age of 16, I got put on the world class performance programme. I’ve been a funded athlete for all my career.

Rob Anderson
Alright, helps remove some of the some of the stresses it obviously adds a bit more because then you’ve got you’ve got to perform when people have eyes on. So you get to Beijing, tell me about that experience. Oh, that was

Ali Jawad
I always say to people think about your like, think about your dream, and then times it by 100. It is a place where you know, you’ve made it into this elite environment. But you’re, it’s like, you’re it’s not it’s not real, it’s not real. Are you thinking that you wake up thinking what am I doing here? And obviously being part of a team that had full of superstars as well, like, it was crazy, especially to do it in 18 months. So it was a dream come true. But at the same time, Beijing was also quite hard because that was when the first signs of Crohn’s here. And yeah, I’ve got kind of sick the night before I competed at the Games, which obviously had a lifelong effect after that.

Rob Anderson
So obviously, you’ve got ambitions to go and perform to a certain level, you then have this challenge that comes out of left field in terms of Crohn’s. So how did that impact your initial performance the very next day? And then what was the impact of that longer term as you’re trying to compensate for having cravings but trying to be a high level athlete?

Ali Jawad
Yeah. So the night before I competed, I started feeling very sick. And within what overnight, I’d lost three kilos in body weight, which is quite a lot. So she had that sort of body weight. And oh, yeah, I was really ill. But there were going to pull me out the next day. But I said to them, like, this is my dream to compete. I was never here for a medal because I was really young, I qualified in last place. I just want to compete, and we can discuss, you know, what happens in the future. So I competed, I didn’t come last, which is good at 12 or came ninth, which is not bad, because I did qualify last place. So for me, like, even though I was really ill, I managed to benchpress 182 and a half, where my form coming into it was about 190. So I lost about seven half kilo overnight on the bar. But you have to remember, I didn’t know what I had, I was poor, I got sick. And then when we returned, it took about nine months to diagnose me with Crohn’s. But at that point, I’d lost 20 Quito and bodyweight like, seeing blood in the toilet. My physical abilities completely. Like went. And it was literally like, you wouldn’t even know you wouldn’t even know that I’ve competed. But yeah, like it was quite tough starting from probably worse than scratch.

Rob Anderson
Yeah, and I guess, you know, to have such a rate of progression so quickly. And then I guess, almost the opposite. Such a quick regression, that must have been really hard to deal with mentally. How did you looking back what what was going on in your head? How are you trying to cope with that?

Ali Jawad
It’s because I didn’t know what was going on. Because I didn’t know what Crohn’s disease was. At the time. I saw I just took some medication, and I’ll be on my way. And then I remember the consultant saying to me, when I got diagnosed, he said, You do understand this is there’s no cure. It’s lifelong. Life’s about to change. He said, from his knowledge. No crone software has has ever won a medal at any olympic or paralympic games, it’s never been done. And we don’t even know if it can be. So he said, You should retire because you’re always going to be at a disadvantage, especially in a sport back then, which higher high was had a high level of doping violations to so I was keen. So you know, putting another chronic disease on top and you’re pretty much screwed.

Rob Anderson
So, yeah, for those who haven’t come across cranes give us a bit of an idea of what’s the daily monthly kind of impact on you in terms of whether that’s recovery, the fluctuations in body, weigh your energy going into training sessions, your ability to get ready for the next training session, what you know, give us a picture of, you know, compared to previously, and then this impact of Crohn’s. How did that change your ability to be an athlete?

Ali Jawad
Yeah, so, Crohn’s is an autoimmune disease where I guess everyone’s got an immune system that protects them. Mine unfortunately, attacks me. And when it attacks me I have loads of like nasty symptoms. I think the big ones for me are the extreme fatigue that you’re under, like just like normally. And it’s not just tiredness, or just like training fatigue we’re talking about, I can’t get out of bed and move fatigue. And then you’ve got the extremity, like the pain that you’re in, the pain is so severe that you pass out from it. And then your lack of appetite, you lose weight at a rapid rate. So I’ve lost a stone in a week quite easily. And obviously, then you see blood in the toilet, you’re very dehydrated, you look like a zombie, basically. And you lose a lot of your physical qualities really quickly. Like it’s crazy what, what drones can do to you and attacks you. And then the medication that you take for Crohn’s. It’s not very good for you. But yes, it might keep your symptoms at bay, but actually, it’s quite toxic. And they’re not great. It’s not they’re not good training. It’s not good for training, or recovery, or, you know, trying to train in a way that’s going to allow you to be a world class athlete. So you have to also think about the medication that you’re taking to. So I was kind of before I thought invincible, because I was you know, 90 invention 190. Thinking, I’m improving rapidly, I want to benchpress over 200 quite easily. And then suddenly, I’ve been hit with a you’re not going to probably benchpress ever again. That’s what level.

Rob Anderson
So you obviously did you, unlike the consultants kind of prediction I get I don’t know what your reaction was, if you’re like, Well, I’m gonna be the first or if you were like, oh, geez, this is a big setback, you obviously found a way to manage those symptoms to manage that. Because you went on to have a huge amount of success in your career. So how did you go about managing it? Was it a case of on the days when I feel good? I go hard on the days when I’m terrible. That’s, you know, recovery day? How did you start to map it together? Because it’s one thing, when people have the stresses of life and work and relationships and the Lego stuff, it’s a whole nother thing where you’ve got this unpredictable thing that can flare up anytime in the middle of a training cycle. And you need to be on your hardest or the day before a competition when you’re supposed to be in the peak physical condition. How did you manage that?

Ali Jawad
Yeah, we’ve graded the difficulty, I think in the beginning, so I guess, you know, at 1920 getting told it can’t be done. Obviously, ego couldn’t say like, oh, well, I can be the first surely not knowing what was going to come at me, I think I underestimated the pain and the suffering, that process was going to what we’re gonna go through now is like, you have to remember, and I keep saying to people that the general Crohn’s community cannot use me as the example. Because I was lucky enough and fortunate enough to be a fully funded athlete, we have access to the most incredible practitioners that money can buy. So the monitoring strategies that we could use to monitor my, like, my everyday circumstance to tackle it was was amazing, right? We’ve got to learn. And from trial and error, we’ve got to understand what it was doing to my body, how I reacted to training and the medication. And, you know, we kind of, we were able to pull to potentially predict what was going to happen with all the tests that were coming through. So I guess it took a lot of time to get to a stage where we could predict and understand it, but because of the trial and error that we used, and the monitoring strategies were so high level. And he also had, you know, seven people working for me that working together. We eventually did get to a place where I was consistent, but it but it took about five years to really understand it. And that’s why should never been less Why should never be the example to any Chrome software. Because I guess I was lucky to have that support mechanism.

Rob Anderson
So obviously, when we’re looking at your your track record, as an athlete, we’ve got 2016 at Rio, you know, the Gold Coast, Commonwealth Games, Glasgow, that 2012 period, where you’d expect me to see that the London 2012 That’s probably that period, that we’re talking about it that way. You’re like, What the hell is going on? How do we figure this out? How do we spot the patterns and the rhythms to be able to know what we’re dealing with?

Ali Jawad
Yeah, I think what would allow us to do was to analyse whether or not we would do what we were doing was optimal, or if we needed more help. So the beginning it was just like me and the coach and maybe a doctor. And then it came to be right but even intuitionist then we need more than one doctor to look after me and and the consultant, like my team grew that way all the time. And then we got the physios involved because I understood what medication was doing to my body and my ranges. Like eventually, my team went from maybe two or three close knit to maybe seven in order for us to understand what was going on. So it took a very long time for us to come up with a system that well I always said to try to outsmart it. And even though a lot of practitioners said to me, you cannot have smart Chrome’s if it’s going to come it’s going to come as well. No you can you can predict these things. is making sure that you’re making sure you’re doing things on a daily basis and adapt to make sure that it is less likely to happen. Because you have to put yourself in a position where I had to live a certain way to be able to pull it off. And that certain way not many people can potentially handle.

Rob Anderson
So you obviously got to the point where you were starting to figure it out, and you can get back to training and can get back to competing. And then we start to see some pretty phenomenal performances, or gold or European championships or gold or World Championships, talk us through when you start to come back and start to think, Okay, I’m getting a bit more momentum. Now what was that like?

Ali Jawad
Oh, amazing, because like, when you’re starting well, like when I broke the world record in 2013, it was just it justified that, you know, I shouldn’t, you know, that wants to carry on. So just to find it to me that I was I made the right choice. He also justified what we were doing as a team, obviously, we can get better. But the fact that we stuck at it, even when it looked really bleak was a testament to how good my team was. But also as well, it made me realise that actually, apparently metal could be on the cards, and I could be the first so actually, like, gave me even more motivation to try and pull it off in, you know, in the three years in that three year period. And between maybe the end of 2012 all the way to 2016 was my best period, like in terms of peak because of Yeah, like, my Crohn’s was under control. And I was lucky enough that training was consistent for me to produce some numbers.

Rob Anderson
What sort of numbers? Are we talking about this period? And what sort of bodyweight?

Ali Jawad
Yeah, so I said that I lost 20 kilos and bodyweight. So I managed to get to a body weight of what a healthy body weight of about 5556 kilo, which is about eight, seven and a half. And I lifted in the gym, I lifted children to kilo. I managed to get to under a kilo about eight times in my career. And I think my competition personal best is 195. So they managed to hit Well, nearly nearly four times body weight. Yeah, like that. That was something that I know for human, like human being can ever get to, especially in our sport anyway.

Rob Anderson
I’d be happy with that as a back squat, to be honest with you.

Ali Jawad
Well, yeah, it was my squat. So

Rob Anderson
yeah, well, I mean, phenomenon sort of appearances. And we start to see that, you know, now you talk about the world record, starting to collect some metals. Now, you know, as you say, the justification of the time and energy, and I’m imagining a few points along the way in that four or five year period where you thought I’m going to pack it in? Or do we always commit to the challenge? Or what did that look like?

Ali Jawad
No matter how bad it got, I never lost sight of why I was doing it. We always said that, we had to accept for the beginning of the process, that it was going to be a difficult one, and one where medical sciences hasn’t caught up, it’s back then it never, there was no available evidence to suggest what we were doing was right. Now, you can say that, you know, I use myself as a guinea pig, I guess I did. But what we did do was we managed to prove that you can still get human levels of elite performance with a chronic illness. Regardless if it’s Crohn’s or anything else. It can be done with the right team that are going to be all in with you. And also the right mindset as an athlete to absorb exactly what’s going to come to you we had to be very adaptable mentally. Because, trust me, it was a it was more bad days than good days and thinking, you know how on earth we’re gonna get to that end point. Without, you know, we call it like, you know, can we get to a point where that I’m still safe enough to carry on? Like, we’ll never ever try cross that bridge of is now too dangerous. We’re never allowed us to get to that point because all the monitoring strategies, which suggest that, okay, we’re still safe enough to do it. And we’d never allow ourselves to go over that point. So it was trying to keep under that point at all times and still carry on even when, you know, it didn’t look too good.

Rob Anderson
So looking back of your career, we’ve got gold medals, silver medals, bronze medals, you know, we’re travelling around the world, Glasgow, the Gold Coast to buy Rio, Beijing. Looking back, what was the peak?

Ali Jawad
Or the peak? Well, you can’t get for me 2015 2016 Why peak years where I benched 200 consistently. And I guess, the I broke the world record twice the Glasgow Commonwealth Games.

Unknown Speaker
But I think for me,

Ali Jawad
I think on paper that parents didn’t Medal, the one that we really wanted growing up, the one that you know, people said it couldn’t be done, what was obviously going to be the highlight. Now, the irony is, I wasn’t the first chrome sufferer to pull it off because As, as you know, the Paralympic Games comes after the Olympics. And two weeks before at the Olympics, a swimmer from America has got Crohn’s won a silver, she’d beat me to it. But you know what, having two Crohn’s sufferers in the space of two weeks to do that is, you know, it was incredible for the community. But the iPod was also the first was the second because the timing

Rob Anderson
two weeks as our Olympics like, oh, like two weeks, but I’m guessing the silver medal helped to calm me down a bit.

Ali Jawad
Oh, definitely. Yeah. Because that that middle computed that career stand for me, it meant that I had the full set.

Rob Anderson
So looking back of your career, you know, there’s so many things you could pull out in terms of, you know, takeaways, a challenge overcoming Crohn’s, you know, being the first person to get a medal, you know, just setting world records, what your biggest takeaway is looking back over your your career as an athlete.

Ali Jawad
I think the biggest one for me, and sounds a bit cliche, but the advice I always had was, if you have one eye on the outcome, and you’ve only got one eye on the process, a process that is challenging, unpredictable, chaos, chaotic. So actually, the outcome becomes a distraction. And so you have to have two eyes on the process at all times. And if you accumulate enough consistent days, you’re going to give yourself a good shot, or whatever the outcome is. So I always, you know, if they were looking back, it’s forget about the outcome, but like, what, what placing your one or what motor you want, put in the work on a daily basis. Because you just don’t know what the process will come up with. And make sure that you hang in there, like with your team and just do the right things. Because a lot of people, I’m not saying they live in delusion land, or they’re dreaming, but sometimes they think of the outcome without even like going through a process. They don’t understand what you have to go through. So I always say, like, focus on what you can control on a daily basis, accumulate enough consistent days and give yourself a good shot at that outcome.

Rob Anderson
That’s amazing advice and great takeaway. It’s applicable to all walks of life, isn’t it, whether it’s academia, sport, career, etc. So definitely something to take away. It’s one of my big bugbears about smart goals. I think people get really caught up in smart goals, which is exactly what you’re talking about the outcome, but then, you know, you can walk away from this and go, right, what does that look like tomorrow? Yeah, you know, it’s actually as you say, it’s in the process. You know, I don’t know who said it. But something like along the lines of, you know, the outcome isn’t guaranteed, but the work is, and I think people get caught up in the outcome, and they don’t focus on that seems

Ali Jawad
like even if you don’t reach that outcome, you can look back and go, actually, I gave it absolutely everything that process. And I’ve actually learned a lot about myself, the abilities that I developed, so I can carry it on to any other areas that I want. And maybe the outcome, there was a little bit too big, actually, I’m glad I aim for that. Such a such a big, you know, goal has always say to people like aim for the impossible. And if you get very close to it, you’ve done something very, very good. And we did we aim for the impossible actually did it just crazy.

Rob Anderson
So you must be a bit of a sadist because not content with a full hall of international medals. You’re undertaking your PhD as well. So tell us a bit about that. What is what is the life look like after sport? And what are you looking at in a PhD?

Ali Jawad
Yeah, for my sins. So as I mentioned previously, like power powerlifting, historically, is has the most like anti doping rule violations across the power of sports, I guess, in weightlifting is the same as the Olympics. Now all my career, I’ve, I don’t know if that sounds a bit geeky, but I’ve studied the system in terms of anti doping. And I’ve felt like there was gaps in terms of what can be done to protect clean athletes. But a lot of the research with the majority focuses on the Olympic athletes and able bodied athletes and actually neglect any para para research. So my PhD is basically anti doping and cheating methods in parasport, trying to hopefully come up with recommendations so that the system has a more more one has a date as data that the two can get can become informed in how they proceed in terms of future policies.

Rob Anderson
So what does that look like? Obviously, anytime you get into the world of doping, people aren’t going to stick their hand up and walk forward and say, oh, yeah, I’d love to chat about my history of doping. And as an insider in the sport, you will also have seen people that you like, that’s, you know, knowing what I know that person is not the classic thing is that when Lance Armstrong was being everyone, and everyone else was getting caught for doping, like okay, come on. You’re either an alien, or your do just have better drugs than other people. So what does that look like in terms of your methodology? How are you collecting this information?

Ali Jawad
Yeah, so yeah, as you said, not many athletes are willing to tell the truth But it’s weird because as an athlete, other athletes and other nations tell you exactly what they’re doing, the thing is insured against theirs can’t prove that it’s just their word, there could be joking, there could be, you know, could be banter, I don’t know. But because I’m one of them, they’ll happily speak to me about what they’re doing. And also, we, as athletes, we’re not silly. Like, we know the signs of what doping is, like, you know, we can see the physical, like traits on when somebody’s done it. Unfortunately, the system is not like that. There’s no common sense there, you have to, you know, violate a few violations for you to know, for you to get banned. And not necessarily look at the effects of doping itself. But when you’re trying to research it, you have to make sure that the research is completely anonymous, you can’t track it back to any athlete. So we’re using methods that the world anti doping agency are using now where they’ve come up with a prevalence model that potentially could be used to protect the identities of athletes that, you know, that want to do the studies, and to make sure that we understand what is the prevalence rate in terms of doping, especially in poorer in Paris? So that’s, that’s the method that I’m using, hopefully, that, you know, reassures athletes that I’m not gonna be able to find out what’s done it or not.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai