Apr 28 2009
850 Cyclists To Be Issued Biological Passports
More than 850 professional cyclists will be issued biological passports by the UCI. These cyclists who have been regularly providing blood and urine samples will be given this passport to build an individual scientific profile for them.
The sports officials are paving the way for monitoring athletes and drug use worldwide. UCI President, Pat McQuaid said in a conference that they are seeing a major change at the top level of the sport. He added that they are all aware of cycling’s growing doping problem, which is something that they have been dealing with for the last 40 years. He stressed that they needed to go at it with a huge campaign in which they bombarded athletes with tests, noting that the biological passport program has given the UCI that opportunity. McQuaid adds that they are hoping that this step will serve as an example for other sports, not just for cycling.
They are taking this biological passport program as a step in winning the trust of sports fans after the Tour de France have been involved in drug issues for two consecutive years.
The biological passport program is an $8 million project by the UCI in collaboration with the World Anti-Doping Agency. This has been funded by race teams, organizers and the cyclists themselves. The athletes are required to give blood and urine samples which are used to have an individual haematological and steroid profile.
When the profiles have been finished, this will be used as reference to identify offenses depending on fluctuations. The differences from the normal levels will be the basis instead of an absolute test of the presence of the banned substances. This program requires regular testing and they need to inform details about where they undergo training. This allows for testing even if there is no competition.
Offenses on this can result to suspension. On the first doping offense, an athlete is banned from the competition for two years. Missing three tests in 18 months is also considered a doping violation.
The UCI executive committee will meet in Copenhagen, Denmark next month to finalize the passport program operation. Even if WADA pulled out of this operation, the results of the meeting will still be made available for them.
McQuaid commented, claiming no disputes with WADA. “The UCI has absolutely no problem with the World Anti-Doping Agency”. He noted that the agencies collaborate on a daily basis in the fight against doping. On testing and the operation of the biological passport program, the UCI anti-doping manager said that this is the peak year of testing. Once they have the profiles they won’t require similar quantity of testing. Establishing that baseline is imperative. Given the sheer size of what they are doing it has been going well. They are reaching the full support of the riders and teams.
They have already completed 9,000 tests for the past year and continuing work this year for 18,500 more tests.
