Doping and testing

This is a body of rules written so that the same words mean the same thing in every country, which makes the vocabulary unusually fixed. The eleventh entry and several after it turn on el control, and that noun is wider in Spanish than « control » is in English. Here it is the test itself: el control antidopaje is the whole procedure, from the knock at the door to the sealed bottle — and English says « test », never « control ». The same holds away from sport. Un control de matemáticas is a class test, un control de alcoholemia is a breath test, un control policial is a roadblock, and pasar el control at an airport is going through security. The English sense — having something under one's command — exists too, in perder el control del coche. But nine times out of ten un control is somebody checking, not somebody in charge.