CANBERRA, Australia - With just under six months to go until the opening ceremonies at the Beijing Olympics, Australian officials plan a blitz of doping tests aimed at exposing drug cheats like American runner Marion Jones.
The Australian Olympic Committee and the Australian Anti-Doping Authority (ASADA) said Thursday it would conduct 1,000 tests on Olympic-level athletes between now and August.
The program will ensure a minimum of one test per athlete. The AOC estimates it will take about 480 athletes to China when team selection is completed in July.
Athlete's blood and urine samples will be stored for eight years under the plan launched by Australia's federal Sports Minister Kate Ellis.
"This will be a major deterrent," said AOC president John Coates. "Knowing ASADA can go back and test for performance enhancing drugs eight years later will make anyone thinking of cheating nervous."
ASADA chairman Richard Ings said if the same testing system had applied to the U.S. Olympic team during the Sydney 2000 Games, Jones would have been exposed in 2003 when the steroid she used became detectable.
After long denying she ever used performance-enhancing drugs, Jones admitted last October she lied to U.S. federal investigators in November 2003, acknowledging she took the designer steroid "the clear" from September 2000 to July 2001.
"This will close once and for all the Marion Jones loophole for athletes using undetectable substances and thinking by beating one test, they can get away with it," Ings said.
While eight years is the limit at which drug cheats can be sanctioned by sporting authorities, samples had previously been kept for as little as three months, Ings said.
As part of the new anti-doping commitment blood sample collection will be stepped up, so-called "risk" athletes will be subjected to multiple tests, and high-risk sports such as weightlifting will be targeted.
The AOC said a record 4,500 drug tests will be carried out at the Beijing Games, which begin August 8.
The World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) will supervise the tests at the Olympics in conjunction with the Chinese organizing committee (BOCOG).
Coates said ASADA will also collaborate with other government agencies and international law enforcement organizations to gather intelligence on alleged doping behavior.
"The IOC president, Jacques Rogge, believes we need more intelligence from the locker rooms and the Internet to catch the drug cheats and we fully support his stance," Coates said.
