New doping tests spell doom for cheats in Sydney

By DANIEL GILHOOLY

SYDNEY - Until this week, Olympic athletes planning to cheat by taking drugs had little to worry about.

Sure, about half the 10,200 Games-bound athletes will be tested randomly in their own countries by branches of the World Anti-Doping Agency.

And there will be 2500 more tests in Australia up to and during the Games. All medal winners will be tested in the biggest blitz on drugs in sports history.

But all these tests will be on urine samples, designed to catch the "unsophisticated" cheat who might still be using narcotics, stimulants, steroids, beta-blockers and diuretics to help reach the top.

But, if the cynics are right, modern cheats do not pump themselves with steroids any more. They have for some time got away with injecting illegal designer drugs like erythropoietin (EPO) and human growth hormone (HGH) to synthetically boost the number of red blood cells and improve the blood's oxygen-carrying capacity.

EPO is rumoured to be the most rife and accessible. It produces up to a 15 per cent improvement in performance for endurance athletes and accelerates recovery in power-based sports.

Most important, EPO is produced naturally by the body, so synthetic versions cannot be detected by urine testing. And, physically, users are almost impossible to spot.

Suspicions that its use was widespread were confirmed during the 1998 Tour de France cycle race when the nine-strong Festina team from Lyons were kicked out after their doctor was arrested with banned drugs, including three varieties of EPO, and confessed to supplying the team.

The scandal deepened five months later when it became known that all nine riders in the Dutch squad had tested positive for drugs, at least four of them for EPO.

Until this week, EPO loomed as the potential nemesis of the Sydney Games.

So it is hard to know how many smug smiles disappeared around the world when a 15-member International Olympic Committee medical panel in Lausanne approved testing for EPO in Sydney from September 2, a fortnight before the Games begin.

Last year, the IOC subsidised scientific teams in Australia and France to come up with watertight blood and urine-testing procedures for EPO.

It looked a lost cause when, in the early stages of research, a false positive test was recorded in Australia, an undesirable scenario for the IOC which dreads an innocent athlete being labelled a cheat at the Games.

But after further refinements, both procedures passed two days of intense scrutiny from the medical commission, which recommended that an athlete must fail both tests to be declared positive.

The tests now need only the approval of the IOC judicial commission, which must be confident they can withstand legal challenges.

As medical commission chairman Prince Alexandre de Merode says: "We know the first person who tests positive under this new test will go straight to the courts ... so we have to be prepared for that. The dual method gives us sufficient guarantee that there is no chance of a single false positive in the testing."

The prince says he will recommend to the IOC executive that more than the 300 random tests already planned take place in Sydney.

Blood testing will detect EPO use from the previous month, while urine testing will identify cheats within a week after injection.

EPO must be taken regularly because its impact wears off steeply after a couple of days and completely after three weeks.

The IOC will not reveal if testing will focus mostly on endurance sports like cycling, rowing, swimming, triathlon, canoeing and athletics, hoping the tests will deter cheats in all disciplines.

Australian sports officials, like most around the world, were delighted that the Lausanne meeting was not another talk-fest tied down in red tape.

They described the decision as a major turning-point in the war against drugs, adding that they were relieved that Customs at Sydney Airport would not be the only line of defence against drug users.

Games organisers Socog and the Australian Sports Drug Agency said the introduction of EPO testing before the Games would provide no logistical problems as the contingency planning was done two years ago.

This week's decision will be an eye-opener for sceptics such as Olympic swimming legend Mark Spitz, who said last week that the IOC deliberately did not test for all banned substances.

Spitz accused the IOC of a conflict of interest, with the eradication of drug use having to be weighed up against the commercial pressure from television networks, which want to cover the best athletes and performances to boost ratings.

Assuming that EPO testing is a success in Sydney, it is likely to spread throughout the sports world.

But it is just the first nail in the coffin of drug cheats, according to Peter Davis, EPO research project manager at the Australian Institute of Sport.

"A test for EPO means there is one less problem. But I'm not naive enough to think this will clean the cheats out."

Continuing research is needed to combat HGH, which will be untested and, probably, undetected in Sydney.

Dr Davis believes that the next challenge will be genetic.

"If you look at the history of nearly all the illegal substances in sport, they were first used for legitimate medical purposes," he says, pointing out that EPO was for treatment of the kidney.

"It's only logical to think that if there is already genetic manipulation of cells for beneficial purposes to fight or eliminate disease, someone will manipulate cells so they can carry more oxygen or recover from stress."

Developments in science and genetic engineering have led to rumours that athletes are experimenting with other blood-related boosters and EPO-masking via plasma expanders.

Dr Davis says injecting the latter can cause allergic reaction and severe shock resulting in death.

"It's extreme stuff, but then some athletes will do anything to get a medal."

- NZPA

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