World Aquatics Releases Anti-Doping Statistics For First Quarter Of Calendar Year 2025

On June 5, World Aquatics released its anti-doping statistics for the first quarter of 2025. In the announcement, the organization stated, “The Aquatics Integrity Unit, working in partnership with the International Testing Agency (ITA), continues to uphold its commitment to clean aquatic sports with the release of its Anti-Doping Statistics for the first quarter of 2025.”

The data spans the five disciplines under World Aquatics, including details on gender distribution, regional breakdowns, the total number of samples collected, and the balance between urine and blood tests.

The biggest story this quarter is how much testing dropped off, with World Aquatics collecting just 1,413 samples compared to the 2,363 they conducted during the same stretch last year, which works out to a 40% decline that puts the numbers back closer to where things stood in 2023 when they collected 1,749 samples, although it’s important to remember that last year was an outlier, with testing surging 49% above 2022 levels when they collected 1,586 samples in Q1.

That pullback in testing volume naturally meant they ended up covering fewer athletes overall, reaching 680 athletes from 63 different countries this quarter versus the much broader net they cast last year when they tested 1,082 athletes from 93 countries.

Looking at what types of tests they’re actually running, urine samples continue to be the go-to approach with 959 urine tests stacked up against 454 blood tests, which creates roughly a 68% to 32% split in favor of urine testing, and this actually marks the highest percentage of urine testing the organization has seen over the past four years while continuing a gradual upward trend in urine collection and a corresponding decrease in blood testing.

The gender split stayed pretty much where you’d expect it to based on recent history, with women accounting for about 51% of all athletes tested compared to 49% for men, which fits well with the pattern we’ve seen over the last four years where women have generally been tested about 1.5% more often than men, though 2023 stands out as the one year in that span when male athletes were tested more.

When you break down the regional numbers, Europe continues to lead the testing landscape by accounting for just over 60% of all samples collected, while the Americas have been on a downward slide from their 22.7% share back in 2022, all the way down to just 14.1% this year.

Asia has steadily climbed from a 4.6% slice in 2022 up to nearly 15% last year before backing off slightly to about 14% this quarter. Oceania has kept things relatively steady in that 7% to 9% range throughout the four-year stretch. Africa consistently records the lowest testing volumes, typically falling somewhere between 2.3% and 3.8%, and came in at 2.5% this quarter.

Swimming still represents most of the testing attention at about 62% of all samples, which is a small bump up from 2024 levels but still falls well short of the 73.8% share it saw back in 2023. Water polo has been holding steady around 16.5%, staying close to last year’s 16.8% and showing some real growth from its much smaller 8.3% footprint in 2023, while artistic swimming jumped to 7.9%, nearly doubling from its 4.3% share last year and more than doubling what it had in 2023 at 3.1%.

Diving and high diving saw their testing decrease slightly to 4.6% from last year’s 5.3%, though that still represents nearly twice their 2023 percentage, while open water swimming took the biggest hit of all the disciplines, dropping from its usual 12% range in recent years down to just 8.9% this quarter.

SwimSwam has compiled the raw data from the past four years: