Doping continues to cast its shadow over the Olympics (Feature)

By George Burns Jul 28, 2008, 19:58 GMT

Hamburg - Over 4,500 tests for banned drugs will be carried out on athletes in and around the Beijing Olympics this summer as organizers continue their all-out war against doping in sport.

The figure is up on the 3,700 tests carried out in Athens four years ago and a huge increase on the 2,800 at Sydney 2000.

There will be a total of 41 drug-testing stations with every station having at least two labs to improve efficiency. Negative results will be available within 24 hours and positive results within 48 hours.

The Beijing Olympic Games will adopt the strictest anti-doping policy to date, where both blood and urine will be tested at the venues for the first time.

The first truly high-profile Olympic doping case came in 1988 when Canada's Ben Johnson tested positive for the steroid stanozolol after sprinting to victory in the men's 100 metres.

Doping has continued to plague both track and field athletics with the likes of Sydney triple gold-medallist Marion Jones ending her career in prison and disgrace and reigning 100m champion Justin Gatlin absent from Beijing as the American serves a four-year ban for using steroids.

International Olympic Committee President, Jacques Rogge, believes the likes of Gatlin and Jones have caused a lack of credibility amongst the general public for high-performance sport, a situation he hopes can be slowly be turned around by ever-stricter doping controls.

'There is this very unfair situation that is created by the athletes themselves; that every big performance is being considered as suspicious,' he said.

'Sometimes with hindsight in history you see that was true. But in general it isn't fair for many athletes to say that so and so is by definition doped because he or she has won a match.'

Doping overshadowed the start of the Athens Games four years ago when Greek sprinters Costas Kenteris and Ekaterini Thanou were kicked out after failing to turn up for a series of scheduled drugs tests, including one on the eve of the opening ceremony.

Like athletics, weightlifting has also struggled with doping and the entire Bulgarian team will be absent after 11 members failed dope tests.

More failed dope tests are expected in Beijing, especially as a new laboratory has been built in the Olympic Sports Centre at a cost of 70 million yuan (10 million dollars), where all tests, apart from those relating to the equestrian events in Hong Kong, will be conducted.

Organizers expect to deal with up to 200 tests a day while under new rules in place for the 2008 Games, an athlete may be notified and tested more than once during the same day.

If an athlete misses a test on two separate occasions during the Games, or on one occasion during the Games as well as twice in the 18 months beforehand, he/she will be considered to have committed an anti-doping rule violation.

Mere possession of any substance on the list of prohibited substances will also constitute a violation.

The International Olympic Committee has also ratified a new rule to keep convicted doping cheats out of future Olympics.

Under the regulation, which came into effect on July 1 and will first apply to eligibility for the 2010 Winter Games in Vancouver, athletes will be banned from the next Olympic Games if they received a drug suspension of at least six months in the previous four-year period.