Rooting out the cheats

IOC chief Juan Antonio Samaranch backs the tests

BBC sports news correspondent Gordon Farquhar looks at the background to the introduction of new drug tests ahead of the Olympics in Sydney.

The approval of the joint urine/blood test for detecting EPO this week marks a major step forward for the International Olympic Committee.

For too long, the IOC failed to take the threat of drugs seriously enough.

The guardians of the Olympics are quick to point out they've been actively fighting against doping for years.

Indeed, the first doping controls were introduced at the Tokyo games in 1964, and the IOC's medical commission was created three years later to oversee the development of doping policy.

But the measure of success is not how long, but how effectively, the fight has been taken to the cheats and the sad truth is not very.

The public didn't know, and largely still don't, who was clean and who was cheating

  Gordon Farquhar

How could the East Germans for so many years use systematic doping to ensure success for its athletes, without being caught?

The fact is that by the 1990s cheating had become a highly sophisticated business, and there was a growing feeling that only an idiot would be caught.

Only when public opinion, corporate America, and the western media began to apply the pressure did the IOC respond with anything like conviction.

The public didn't know, and largely still don't, who was clean, and who was cheating.

The big-money sponsors didn't want to be associated with drugs and deception, and finally the penny dropped.

Research

The creation of the World Anti-Doping Agency last year was a step in the right direction.

We now have an overseeing body to co-ordinate the current research, and fund new projects to try to close the gap on the cheats.

The first fruit is the new EPO test. It is the drug of choice among some cyclists and other endurance racers, and previously undetectable.

Testing both blood and urine makes it exceptionally accurate, but it's only a start.

As IOC president Juan Antonio Samaranch has indicated, human growth hormone is the next challenge.

It has the same overall effect as steroids, but is currently undetectable - think of that.

For the sake of the credibility of sport, a test can't come soon enough.