Drugs cheats warned as Olympics testing well underway

Olympic officials are confident of catching drugs cheats at the Vancouver Games with an anti-doping programme they say is more extensive than ever before.

Vancouver's doping laboratory has already tested more than 300 blood and urine samples from Olympic athletes, it was revealed Tuesday.

More than 800 athletes will be tested before their competition and some 2,000 doping controls are expected during the Games. There have been no positive tests so far.

International Olympic Committee (IOC) medical commission chairman Arne Ljundqvist said he was confident drugs cheats would be exposed - if not during the Games than later.

"I am sure that we are getting the Games cleaner and cleaner for every edition," he said.

The vast majority of the some 2,500 athletes at the Olympics will be tested for performance-boosting drugs at least once before the Games end Feb 28.

The testing began with the opening of the Olympic village Feb 4 and all athletes - even those still at training camps abroad - have to be available for testing.

Christiane Ayotte, the scientist in charge of the laboratory at the Richmond Oval, told reporters the laboratory would be working around the clock during the Games and was equipped to provide testing "of the highest quality possible".

She added: "We can test all prohibited substances for which there is an existing method. We have incorporated all the latest potential drugs and medication we know could be taken by athletes so we are pretty confident we have done the best that could be done."

Thirty-five scientists will be working once the Games start on Friday. The heads of the drugs-testing laboratories from the two preceding Games at Beijing (2008) and Turin (2006), the London 2012 Games and from the Oslo laboratory, which is particularly experienced in winter sport, are also in Vancouver.

Ljundqvist said the number of tests would by 25 percent to 40 percent higher than in Turin but "the important thing is to do the right tests at the right time."

The Turin games saw one positive test - Russian biathlete Olga Medvedtseva (then Pyleva) - but six Austrian biathletes and cross-country skiers later received lifetime bans, and Ljundqvist said it was conceivable that athletes could be exposed long after competition.

"The sooner you can identify a cheat the better but we have eight years at our disposal," he said referring to the statute of limitations adopted in WADA's anti-doping code.

Despite the IOC's anti-doping efforts, Ljundqvist said he was also prepared for the possibility of positive doping cases.

"History tells us that suprisingly and unfortunately there are people who decide to take a chance. We have seen it at every Games. Whether we will be seeing it here, who knows?" he said.

"No system is foolproof. It would be naive to believe it, both for technical reasons and for reasons that you can have a sophisticated intake of drugs (it is possible) that you don't catch the athlete at the right time with the right means."

However the opportunity of testing frozen samples for new substances, and greater cooperation with the pharmaceuticals industry meant WADA scientists were in a better position to catch drugs cheats later.

Doping has plagued the winter Olympics in the past, most notably in 2002 when, among others, three-time cross-country gold medallist Johann Muehlegg and Russian skiers Olga Danilova and Larissa Lazutina were caught blood doping and disqualified.

Retests of samples were carried out for the first time after the Beijing summer Games. Six athletes, including the original 1,500m gold medallist Rashid Ramzi of Bahrain, were as a result tested positive for the latest version of the blood booster EPO.

Referring to the IOC's concerns following a high number of doping tests by Russia athletes over the past year, Ljundqvist said he hoped the newly-formed Russian anti-doping laboratory would receive the full support of authorities in the country to work independently.

IOC president Jacques Rogge said Monday he had met Russian President Dmitry Medvedev to raise his doping concerns.

"The IOC's concerns are related to the fact that Russia will be hosting the next (winter) Olympic Games (at Sochi)," Ljundqvist said. "Russia have understood that they have a problem to deal with."

Last updated on Feb 10^th, 2010 at 13:17 pm IST--DPA