Skiing needs legal technical documents for passport program in anti-doping fight

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Skiing needs legal all-clear in anti-doping fight
International Herald Tribune, France - 10 minutes ago
Sarah Lewis, secretary-general of the International Ski Federation (FIS), said Friday it could act "the sooner the better" using blood profiling from tests taken for its athletes "passport" project.

The Swiss-based FIS has five examples of unnamed cross-country skiers who gave samples for an individual blood profile that produced abnormal results, but who can't yet be pursued because the legal framework is not in place. [...]

At an anti-doping forum held in Berlin on Thursday, Bengt Saltin, the architect of FIS's blood-testing program in 2001, said the governing body is looking at suspect test results from five skiers in the Nordic endurance discipline.

Lewis said the Swedish professor's system had become steadily more sophisticated. It detects suspected doping cases indirectly through variations in an athlete's blood readings rather than direct identification of banned substances.

WADA's executive committee met last weekend in Montreal, where it announced progress in the athletes' passport concept.

However, it must produce more technical documents to standardize blood-profile programs before cases leading to sanctions could be brought under the revised WADA Code, which comes into effect Jan. 1 ...


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