Tougher for cheats to cheat the system
Athens testing to be strictest ever, says Rob Longley
By ROB LONGLEY, TORONTO SUN
If there are Canadian Olympic athletes out there dopey enough to dope up, their lives just became a little more difficult. The Canadian Centre for Ethics in Sport is in the process of enacting an anti-doping program that will be tougher on cheaters, much more diligent in chasing them down.
The new regulations, which must be implemented by the country's amateur sports organizations by June 1, come at the start of a summer when there is a good chance stories on performance-enhancing drugs will be prominent.
There is speculation that testing at the Athens Games will be far more rigid than at past Olympics. Then there is the fallout from the BALCO affair which has targeted not only Major League Baseball players but has stained some prominent U.S. track and field athletes as well.
The CCES rules help Canadian athletes and sports organizations get in line with the World Anti-Doping Code with plenty of time to spare prior to the Olympics.
Finalized and approved by the Canadian Olympic Committee last week, it is now time to spread the word.
With improving testing and so much attention paid to it, CCES president and CEO, Paul Melia, said informing athletes of the new world guidelines is critical.
"The testing is improving every day," Melia said in an interview. "We are very close on (being able to detect) human growth hormones. Athletes have to be aware that if they take something to enhance their performance, they are taking a huge risk.
"If they are taking a substance that people are telling them is undetectable, they should be very wary of that. They don't want to go down that road."
One of the regulations being implemented requires Canadian athletes to keep officials aware of their whereabouts. In other words, they essentially must be available for random, unannounced testing "on a quarterly basis."
That may sound a little like Big Brother, but Melia said the monitoring measures will help keep cheats from cheating the system.
"The biggest single weakness in the testing side of an anti-doping program is not knowing where they are so you can test them with no notice," Melia said. "Athletes can make their whereabouts difficult to pin down. They can train for long periods of time and avoid testing."
The CCES measures are twofold: First to ferret out cheats but also to avoid embarrassment for Canadians on the massive global stage of the Olympic Games. The Canadian code also calls for automatic hearings prior to any sanctions and allows organizations to suspend an athlete pending a hearing. Over the next few months, the CCES field staff will be testing and educating athletes on their new reality.
"The science of testing is constantly finding a way to detect new designer drugs," Melia said. "The wording of the banned list outlines that if there's a question of changing a couple of molecules in a substance that's not going to be a legal loophole.
"It's really served to tighten the testing process as we head to Athens. I have no doubt the testing at the Games will be done professionally."
