The fight against athletes doping has made great strides ahead of the Olympic Games, but countries now need to work together
As brilliant white light shone off shiny lab benches and zero tolerance soundbites dropped from the lips of government ministers as they glided around a testing facility that was one part school science lab and two parts Hollywood sci-fi, it was easy to be convinced that the fight against doping was all but won.
Situated just off a roundabout on an industrial estate on the outskirts of Harlow the scale of the operation and the technology on show last week ? described as the most advanced and up-to-date testing lab anywhere in the world ? was undeniably impressive.
Professor David Cowan, a drugs expert at King's College who will oversee a team of more than 150 scientists, and Sir Andrew Witty, the GlaxoSmithKline chief executive who has provided the facilities as part of a sponsorship deal with London 2012 organisers, had an air of reassuring confidence. "We'll be fast, sensitive, efficient and right," vowed Cowan. The numbers back him up: 6,250 tests, results within 24 hours, 1,000 staff employed to collect samples and take them under high security to the lab during the London Games.
Touring the facilities the progress that has been made since Ben Johnson crossed the line, eyes bulging, in Seoul in 1988 became clear. The march stolen by cheats in the past two decades as blood doping and human growth hormones came to the fore has been largely eroded by technology and science.
More than 200 compounds that make up banned substances can be tested for on a molecular level and reliable tests for blood doping have been developed. If anyone is daft or desperate enough to cheat at the Games, there is a very good chance they will be caught. Out of competition testing ? which is, after all, where any prospective doper with a modicum of sense would concentrate their efforts ? has also come a long way.
For the London 2012 chief executive Paul Deighton, present for the grand unveiling, it was exactly the message he wanted to hear and the perfect pitch for its pre-Games messaging: essentially, we want to get through this Olympics without a major doping scandal that might dent its appeal, but if we do it won't be for any perceived lack of effort in trying to catch the guilty.
But to believe the fight has been all but won is equally dangerous. Beneath the surface there are huge issues facing the global anti-doping movement and those at the sharp end are desperately trying to battle against any hint of complacency. If anything, the scale and expense of their task has only increased as the fight becomes as much about intelligence-led policing as retrospective testing.
Yet the World Anti-Doping Agency (Wada), set up as a joint venture between governments and the International Olympic Committee a decade ago to tackle doping on a global level, has had its budget frozen as governments around the world tighten their belts. Some in the anti-doping world fear that the new bogey man on the block ? the threat of fixing arising from the huge illegal betting markets in east Asia ? may divert attention and resources.
Most pressing is the need to tackle what amounts to a two- or even three-tier global anti-doping system. The question is whether those who have invested millions in building robust anti-doping organisations are able to drag others around the world up to their level or whether frustration that they pursue a zero tolerance regime when others around the world do not will boil over.
Late last year, UK Anti-Doping (UKAD) said it would go the former route by joining together with counterparts in the US, Australia, Canada and Norway to form the Institute of National Anti-Doping Organisations.
"Our athletes go to a country and say it's ridiculous; they say 'No one is tested there or the tests are very perfunctory,' whereas here they know they have an established system," said UKAD's chairman David Kenworthy at the time. "They say: 'We have a worry that people cheat in that country.'"
More worrying was the warning from UKAD's chief executive Andy Parkinson that there were countries who could afford to get tough but were still failing to do so. "The bigger issue we can see is for nations we aren't going to mention, the ones that have the resources that just don't want to do it. So there are the haves, the have-nots that want do it and then there are the actual ones that are paying lip service to it. That is the bigger concern for our athletes and for Wada."
Then there are those who believe Wada itself is ripe for fundamental reform, that it has become too bureaucratic and process-driven. The British Olympic Association chairman Lord Moynihan lit the blue touch paper on that debate in an incendiary speech last year in which he said: "Regrettably, despite spending hundreds of millions of dollars in the 10 years since its creation, Wada has been unable to achieve its own, well-intentioned objectives."
So for all that we might be confident that any athlete who competes at the London Games with banned substances in their system will almost certainly be caught ? if not now then in the eight years that samples are stored for ? the fight is far from over and the fierce debate over the means by which it should be fought is likely to intensify rather than recede.
Techno challenge
Information released this week by the broadcasting and telecommunications regulator Ofcom highlighted a potential issue that will either pass completely without comment at Games-time or has the potential to deal its reputation a savage blow. Demand for wireless technologies will more than double in London during the Games, it said, presenting a "unique logistical challenge never faced before by the UK". Ofcom should be able to manage demand for the spectrum that will allow broadcasters and organisers to co-exist. A bigger challenge is being faced by mobile phone networks and Wi-Fi providers. The hi-tech vision once expounded by Boris Johnson, the London mayor, among others for spectators in the stadium to follow events on some kind of free gizmo that would provide them with all manner of statistics and extra information has long since been dropped in favour of simply trying to ensure everyone has a working mobile and Wi-Fi connection for the majority of the time.
Skirting the issue
It is hardly the most pressing issue ahead of the Games, but it is the sort of debate that may just go on to fill countless column inches if the Amateur International Boxing Association (Aiba) ? which, in common with some of its international federation brethren, doesn't always appear a beacon of good sense and transparency ? doesn't get its ducks in a row. Aiba commissioners this week discussed in Thailand the pressing issue of whether female boxers, who will appear at the 2012 Games for the first time, should wear skirts or shorts.
The issue was discussed in detail but there was no consensus and there will be no final decision until July. Boxers have expressed strong views on both sides ? some say skirts are more comfortable, others would prefer to stick with shorts ? so surely the common sense outcome would be to leave the matter up to personal preference. But where such delicate edicts are concerned, common sense is almost never a factor.
Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/sport/blog/2012/jan/24/london-2012-technology-science-drugs-cheats
Grant Lewis Nicklas Lidstrom David Liffiton John-Michael Liles
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