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IOC official: Jamaican sprinters should expect more drugs tests

 

LONDON (Reuters) - Jamaican athletes, who have dominated the sprint events at the London Olympics should now expect more visits by drugs testers, former anti-doping chief Dick Pound said on Saturday.

Usain Bolt stormed to victory in both the 100 and 200 meters with Shelly-Ann Fraser-Pryce snatching gold in the women's 100 as the Caribbean island consolidated its domination of the blue riband events.

"No, they are one of the groups that are hard to test, it is (hard) to get in and find them and so forth," former World Anti-Doping Agency chief Pound told Reuters Television when asked whether he was happy with the way Jamaica tested its athletes.

"I think they can expect, with the extraordinary results that they have had, that they will be on everybody's radar," said Pound, an International Olympic Committee member.

Jamaica won a clean sweep in the men's 200 with Yohan Blake and Warren Weir winning silver and bronze behind Bolt.

Blake was also second to Bolt in the 100 and the duo also combined with Nesta Carter and Michael Frater to retain the 4x100 relay title in a world record time. It was Bolt's third gold for the second successive Games.

Veronica Campbell-Brownof Jamaica also claimed bronze in the women's 100m behind Fraser-Pryce.

Pound said the IOC was still a long way away from winning the fight against doping with 11 athletes being expelled from the Games since the start of the Olympic period on July 16.

"I think it is too soon to say. I think we are gaining and getting better at science," said Pound, WADA's first president.

"We are starting to get better at smart testing. But there is a long way to go yet. In Churchillian terms, it is not the beginning of the end, but the end of the beginning."

Victor Conte, convicted owner of the now-defunct BALCO laboratory that was at the centre of a global doping scandal, had said earlier this week that 60 percent of athletes at the Games were on drugs.

"He is probably more likely to know than we are. I hope it is not 60 per cent, but it is certainly a lot more than we are catching," Pound said.

"The drug testing that will be done here is first class. I would not expect many cases at the Olympics because if you test positive here you fail not a drugs test but an IQ test."

The IOC will run more than 5,000 tests at the Games that end on Sunday.

More than 100 athletes were also caught using banned substances in the months leading up to the Games following increased testing by national and international anti-doping agencies, designed to root out cheats before they arrived in London.

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Originally Posted by Nehru:

BUMBA KLATH IOC. A BUNCH OF RACIST DOGS!!!

Stupid man, that is practice. It has little to do with racism

 

In biking for example, which is a seasonal sport,   as soon as the winners come off the track the are followed by a UCI member looking to get a Urine sample. Since the season is practically from January to December, cyclists have to inform the org everywhere they will be and how long all through the year. 

 

Tour de France 2007 rider Michael Rasmussen was leading the tour and he was kicked out because he did not tell the truth where he was for a month. He said he was in Mexico when a photographer caught him on camera training in the alps.  The assumption was he was training and on banned substances and hiding so the cannot be tested.

 

Olympic athletes only get spot checks so they got it good.

FM

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