Doping control

The fourth entry, il controllo fuori competizione, holds a phrase an English reader will translate correctly and still only half understand. In the language of anti-doping, fuori competizione marks the stretch of time in which an athlete is not competing, so a test carried out then is an out-of-competition test: the phrase names a window in the calendar. But fuori competizione has an older and entirely ordinary life in Italian sport, and there it names a person rather than a period. A runner who enters a race fuori competizione does run, does cross the line, and is simply not placed — no ranking, no prize, no record. The same thing is said with fuori gara, and at a film festival with fuori concorso. English keeps the two apart: « out-of-competition » belongs to the testing window, while the runner is « unranked » or « not competing for a place ». One Italian phrase does both jobs, and what decides between them is the noun in front of it. Un atleta fuori competizione is a person; un controllo fuori competizione is a moment.