Theory and Decision https://doi.org/10.1007/s11238-018-9669-5 Cheating in a contest with strategic inspection Guy Elaad 1 · Artyom Jelnov 1 © Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, part of Springer Nature 2018 Abstract We analyze a game between three players: two Athletes and an Inspector. Two athletes compete with each other and both may cheat to increase their chances of victory. The Inspector wishes to detect incidents of cheating, and performs tests on athletes to detect cheating. The test is costly for the Inspector. Both probability of cheating and that of testing decrease as cost of inspection diminishes. Keywords Inspection · Cheating · Doping · Contest 1 Introduction Anti-doping activity is a top priority for the International Olympic Committee (IOC), and for most national Olympic committees and sport federations. To ensure “clean sports,” the inspecting authorities adopted a zero-tolerance policy against athletes who use and/or supply prohibited substances. Several infamous doping scandals have shocked the sport world. For example, the US Anti-Doping Agency (USADA) dis- covered that Lance Armstrong won all of his seven Tour de France titles by doping. Another scandal occurred in the 1988 Summer Olympics in Seoul when the Cana- dian sprinter Ben Johnson was stripped of his 100 m gold medal due to steroid use. More recently, in January 2016, Maria Sharapova failed a drug test at the Australian Open tournament and was banned from tennis for 2 years by the International Tennis Federation (ITF). Anti-doping agencies use different methodologies to detect cheating. For example, the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) selects athletes for testing both randomly and according to competition results. The policy of the German anti-doping agency (NADA) is that “selection of athletes ... can either be decided by placing, by name B Artyom Jelnov artyomj@ariel.ac.il Guy Elaad guyel@ariel.ac.il 1 Ariel University, Ariel, Israel 123