London 2012 doping lab gets WADA approval

LONDON - The doping laboratory that will process more than 6,000 samples at this year's London Olympics has been given the seal of approval by the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA).

The London 2012 organising committee have vowed to leave no stone unturned in the battle to catch drug cheats at this year's Games and will conduct its anti-doping operation at a sprawling site owned by chemical giant GlaxoSmithKline, 30 kilometres north of the main Olympic hub.

One in two competitors will be tested during the Games, including all those who win medals with samples being processed throughout the day and night by 150 highly-trained technicians supplied by King's College London.

WADA have carried out a series of rigorous tests of London's doping system over the past two years, including three formal inspections of staff and equipment.

"Doping athletes must know that there is a very good chance they will be tested this summer and that everything scientifically possible -- and with the assistance of growing intelligence -- will be done to make sure that their efforts to cheat are detected by experts at the laboratory," WADA president John Fahey said in a statement.

"Achieving WADA accreditation means that the London 2012 Anti-Doping Laboratory will operate to the highest standards of sample analysis during the Olympics and Paralympics."

While London organisers are confident they will weed out potential cheats, a German researcher recently told a conference on doping that up to 100 new performance enhancing drugs could not be detected by current tests.

"They act like EPO (erythropoietin) but they are structurally different and that means the current EPO tests will not pick them up," Mario Thevis told delegates at a conference in London convened by World Sports Law Report.??