A PIONEERING method for identifying sports cheats could potentially be good enough to be used in court.
Under the scheme, athletes submit initial blood samples, producing a baseline profile, or passport, that subsequent samples get compared against. The hope is that this will reveal suspicious deviations in levels of certain substances β such as a dramatic increase in red blood cells β that are indicative of doping, without having to identify the illegal substance itself, which can often prove elusive.
The International Cycling Union (UCI) has been piloting the scheme. Over a year, it took around 8300 blood samples from 804 cyclists. that a small number of these athletesβ profiles are βunder further scrutinyβ.
Advertisement
The hope is to use the passports as evidence in court cases. But a panel of experts convened by the UCI is still evaluating whether such profiles constitute strong enough evidence with which to press charges. The matter is highly sensitive as the first passports to be used in court will serve as a test case of the whole idea. βEveryone waits for the first case to see how it pans out,β says David Howman, director general of the World Anti-Doping Agency.
WADA, which is not involved in the UCI trial, will soon release a manual of standardised protocols for passport testing so that accredited labs can start using the scheme.