VANCOUVER, British Columbia — A team of nearly three dozen scientists assembled by the
International Olympic Committee will conduct more than 2,000 doping tests on athletes competing at the Vancouver Games. But I.O.C. officials say athletes who cheat still might get away with it — at least for a while.
“No system is foolproof,” Arne Ljungqvist, the chairman of the committee’s medical commission, said at a news conference on Tuesday, adding that it would be naïve to think that every athlete who doped would be caught.
“History tells that, after all, there are people who try to take a chance,” he said. “We have seen it in every Games. Whether we will be seeing it here again, who knows. I am sure that we are getting the Games cleaner and cleaner for every edition.
Ljungqvist said that the antidoping system in place here had a valuable safety net: the rule allowing the I.O.C. to retest athletes’ blood and urine samples — and then sanction athletes — for up to eight years. That rule was used at the Beijing Games. Nearly two months after those Summer Games, a group of athletes’ blood samples were retested for the blood-booster CERA, a drug for which scientists did not have a validated test during those Olympics.
That retroactive testing caught six athletes, including a gold medalist in track and field and a silver medalist in road cycling who subsequently had their medals stripped from them.
“Surely we have been given all the necessary tools to fight doping in Vancouver,” Ljungqvist said. “I am confident that cheats here may be identified sooner or later.
Through Monday, scientists here have conducted 220 tests on athletes at the Games, but also at their training sites, said Christiane Ayotte, the director of the Vancouver laboratory. No positives tests have been found, she said.
She said that 1,600 urine tests and from 400 to 500 blood tests would be done on athletes in all sports. Some of the more complicated analyses could take up to 72 hours to complete, she said. .
Scientists are testing for the normal list of doping products, including steroids, EPO and human growth hormone, but would also be looking for newer drugs that have not hit the market yet. “All the new methods are in place,” she said. .
The data collected in the testing would also be sent to international federations that have biological passport programs. Those programs monitor certain markers in their athletes’ blood and chart them over time. Any variation of those markers could indicate doping.
Positive tests relating to abnormal blood profiles could take months, Ayotte said. Those profiles could also lead to further testing on the athlete involved.
