IAAF announces more than 1,000 doping tests at Berlin worlds

Berlin - More than a record 1,000 doping tests are palnned around the upcoming world athletics championships, the ruling body IAAF announced on Tuesday. The IAAF said that more than 600 blood samples will be taken before Saturday's start and an additional 400 blood and urine samples during the competition which runs until August 23. The samples will be kept for possible retests and will be part of the athletes' blood pass which the IAAF introduced at the beginning of the year. The drug testing will be accompanied by educational activities on substance abuse by the IAAF. Some 2,100 athletes from more than 200 countries are on the provisional entry list for he biggest global sports event of the year. ' IAAF president Lamine Diack said the anti-doping programme was to protect the clean athletes 'so that in Berlin we can join together and celebrate their achievements. 'However for those athletes who still consider that they need to cheat to succeed both blood and urine samples collected from this event will be analysed and even stored by the IAAF for future analysis should new prohibited substances or methods become detectable,' he said. 'If they think they can turn up to our championships with an undetectable drug and get away with it, then they may be in for a shock, and our recent prosecutions prove this.' The 1,500m Olympic champion Rashid Ramzi, for instance, tested positive for the latest generation of the blood booster in retests of samples from last year's Beijing Games.