Monday, August 4, 2014

Rio without a drug testing lab

Rio de Janeiro’s anti-doping lab was stripped of its accreditation by the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) last year; Brazil is still without a certified drug testing laboratory two years out from the next Olympics, which it will host.  The lab lost its accreditation because of the large number of false positives and "repeated failures" test results that the lab found. Apparently, the lab had somewhat of a record for producing “false positives” – in 2012 it produced a positive test for testosterone on Brazilian beach volleyball player Pedro Solberg Salgado that was later shown to be false.

More recently, the lab saw its positive test on now-retired Chelsea soccer star Deco overturned when his sample was retested in Lausanne. Deco originally tested positive for hydrochlorothiazide, a masking agent for steroids, and tamoxifen, often used to lessen the side effects of steroids, but he was officially cleared of the charges after the Lausanne re-test.

Rio, Brazil is set to host the Summer Olympics in 2016 and is now without a drug testing facility to test the athletes with.  For this year’s World Cup that was hosted in Brazil there was no drug testing facility.  All of the samples had to be shipped to a lab in Lausanne, Switzerland according to Inside the Games.  The cost of shipping these samples were close to 250k.

According to CNN Money, the cost of hosting the Olympics is rising and making a profit is harder.  There is even the cautionary tale of Greece who spent close to 11 Billion Euros (double the amount the Government budgeted for) on the games and now the country and most of the EU is in financial distraught.  The cost of sending samples to Switzerland could be possibly double the cost the World Cup spent.  Spending a possible 500K on shipping drug testing samples isn’t feasible for Rio.   The anti-doping lab in Rio needs to get its accreditation back by the time 2016 rolls around.  Brazil is starring to rush but it is running out of time for the 2016 Olympics.  


This article is a summation of an article on Swimswam.com that can be found here. 


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