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Australia threw down the gauntlet to Olympic drug cheats today, with a tough new regime ensuring dopers have to beat not one, but every test developed during the next eight years.
Under the new Pure Performance Program, announced by Federal Sport Minister Kate Ellis today, up to 1,000 athletes will have blood and urine samples tested before boarding the plane to Beijing.
Every athlete will be tested at least once without notice, while those in medal contention or in sports considered at higher risk of doping will be subjected to multiple examinations.
Athletes receiving medal incentive payments from the Australian Olympic Commission (AOC) and those competing in at risk sports will have their samples retained for up to eight years in a deep freeze tank used by the Australian Sports Anti-Doping Authority (ASADA).
Swimming, track and field, cycling, weightlifting, baseball and triathlon are among sports considered high risk.
“Doping has no place in Australian sport,” Ms Ellis told reporters in Canberra.
“Nobody can guarantee that our team will be completely clean but what we can do is put in place the best possibility of finding drug cheats that we’ve ever had.”
Ms Ellis described new regime as the world’s most rigorous.
However, it fails to give ASADA power to compel witnesses to give evidence, despite calls for such a measure from AOC president John Coates.
In October last year, retired swimmer Elka Graham came under fire for refusing to reveal the name of an athlete who offered her performance-enhancing drugs on the eve of the Athens Olympics.
Ms Ellis said the $1 million program sent an unequivocal message to would-be drug cheats that they would eventually be caught.
“An athlete doping today with a designer steroid no longer has to simply cheat one test. They have to cheat every test that may be designed in the next eight years,” she said.
Traditionally, athletes’ samples were retained for just three months.
Mr Coates said as Australia clamps down harder on drug cheats, so too must other countries.
“We welcome our athletes being subjected to the most thorough of testing but we would like to see the rest of the world follow suit as soon as possible, and I don’t think that’s the case at the moment,” he said.
The United Kingdom was considering using ASADA as a model for its own testing regime leading into the 2012 London Games, he said.
ASADA chairman Richard Ings said the deep freeze tank has been in operation since March last year.
“This will close once and for all the Marion Jones loop hole,” he said.
“If the tank had been in place in 2000 then Marion Jones would have been sanctioned in 2003.”
Jones admitted to taking steroids before the Sydney 2000 Olympics and has since been stripped of her three golds and two bronze medals from the Games.