IOC to be smarter, tougher on potential Olympic drug cheats
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A record 2,453 doping tests are planned around the Sochi Games as the International Olympic Committee aims to tighten its grip on potential cheaters even further.
Around half of them, 1,269 tests, were planned ahead of the official start of Olympic testing on January 30 in order to prevent offenders making the trip to Russia.
"The Sochi Games will be the most stringent anti-doping programme in the history of Winter Olympics," the International Olympic Committee's communications director Mark Adams said in Sochi.
Big numbers of drug cheats are not expected to be revealed at the Games, which open on Friday.
The Winter Olympics have only seen around 20 athletes caught during competition days since tests were introduced in 1968 in Grenoble.
The most famous of them were cross-country skiers Johan Muehlegg, Olga Danilova and Larisa Lazutina, who used forbidden substances at Salt Lake City 2002 and were stripped of their gold medals.
The pre-competition tests for Sochi see a rise of 57 per over Vancouver 2010, while the total number of 2,453 is up 14 per cent from 2,149 four years ago.
A total of 1,184 post-competition tests will be carried out in Sochi with a focus on "higher risk" sports and team sports including icehockey.
"We will improve our anti-doping system with regard to both quality and quantity," IOC president Thomas Bach said when he released the figures at the World Anti-Doping Conference in November.
"With a record number of samples and pre-competition tests, we shall be smarter and tougher in our fight against doping than at any previous Olympic Winter Games. We shall perform these tests anywhere in the world - as a more effective, more flexible, better deterrent.
"Bach said the IOC invested 1 million dollars alone into the tests ahead of Sochi, and many more millions for the competition tests, but that the money is well spent.
"These millions of dollars are not expenses. They are an investment in the future of our sport," he said.
The investment must be seen in connection with a general further clampdown on which the IOC plans to spend 20 million dollars to fight doping and corruption.
As a further deterrent in Sochi, samples will be kept for 10 years, allowing future re-testing should technology improve.
The laboratories in Cologne and Moscow have developed a method to detect steroids over a longer period in samples than in the past.
However, the Moscow lab, which is to handle parts of the Olympic analysis, also made negative headlines when it was provisionally suspended by the World Anti-Doping Agency over quality management concerns.
Moscow has by now met certain conditions and is expected to deal with the Sochi tests along with a lab in the host city.
The host nation has also had negative recent headlines with athletes caught doping.
The national anti-doping agency RUSADA said around 90 athletes were punished in the first nine months of 2013, more than double the number sanctioned in the full year 2012.
