Olympic medals 'should be delayed until doping tests are confirmed'

A leading sports scientist has claimed that Olympic medals should be delayed until doping tests are confirmed, which could be up to eight years in some cases.

Professor Chris Cooper, a biochemist at the University of Essex said that medals won at the London Olympics this summer should not be handed out until 2020 because this is how long it takes laboratory samples to be fully tested.

The new anti-doping laboratory in Harlow, Essex, will keep blood and urine samples taken from athletes for eight years, allowing biochemists time to catch up with substances that are currently undetectable, the Independent has reported.

Retrospective testing has been proved to work before, most notably after 2008 Olympic 1500m gold medallist Rashid Ramzi, of Bahrain, was stripped of his title in November 2009, a year after crossing the finish line at the Bird's Nest Stadium in Beijing.

According to professor Cooper, there could be a "perfect storm" of drugs development that could catch laboratories out, as athletes exploit medical breakthroughs by pharmaceutical companies. He cited blood doping as being one to watch, with some Tour de France cyclists artificially increasing the amount of red blood cells in the body.

This is a development which has become particularly popular among big pharmaceutical firms because it has implications for the treatment of leukaemia and cancer. However, it can also give athletes an unfair advantage.

Erythropoietin (EPO) is the hormone that is of interest the athletes, which produces more red blood cells. The body produces it naturally in high-altitudes, hence why many athletes undergo high altitude training.

Taking the hormone offers an unfair advantage, but researchers have only recently developed a test which can check for injections of artificial EPO. It is particularly difficult to trace because it happens naturally in the body.

"Sports don't have the money to develop these drugs themselves, they might cost £1bn, but the pharmaceutical companies do. These companies do talk to the anti-doping people, and rightly so, but new compounds could still find their way back into sport, long before any effective test for them could be developed. It's unlikely athletes will be taking drugs at the actual Olympics, anyone cheating will have done so long beforehand. But we might not find out for many years," Professor Cooper said.

Posted by Neil Clark