FIS Anti-Doping Coordinator Sarah Fussek says that her federation is in the very early stages of harmonizing their Athlete Biological Passport testing protocol with other winter sports federations, with a possible end result of the IOC taking over all testing at the Olympics. This would allow FIS to do more testing at other events in Olympic years.
The World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) discovered a major snafu this week in the leadup to the Sochi Winter Olympics when it rendered Moscow's antidoping laboratory -- the one that's expected to test Olympic athletes in less than three months -- sub-standard.
Note: This is the third piece culled from an interview with Professor Arne Ljungqvist. The first two addressed current challenges faced by the International Ski Federation (FIS) and other anti-doping groups today. Since humans first started challenging each other in feats of athleticism, there have been cheaters. And likely for almost that long, there have been cheaters that used some sort of performance enhancing substances to beat their competitors. But it wasn’t until the 1960s...
STOCKHOLM, Sweden – Imagine if Charlotte Kalla or Marcus Hellner were caught this season with a positive test for EPO, or maybe a bag of blood in a hotel room. Or what if Ole Einar Bjørndalen showed up with HGH, or Petter Northug with steroids? If you can’t imagine any of these things, it’s because of a cultural change in Scandinavia in the last two or three decades that is the result largely of the...