The Australian Olympic Committee is providing intelligence to the Australian Sports Anti-Doping Authority on 1,200 athletes in its shadow Olympic team "as part of a targeted anti-doping program designed to weed out any drug cheats before the Rio Games," according to Nicole Jeffery of THE AUSTRALIAN.
ASADA announced it had been conducting the "most rigorous" pre-Olympic and Paralympic drug-testing program ever in Australia for the past eight months, focusing on target testing those in high-risk events.
As part of that process the AOC "provided ASADA with information on each shadow team member, including a weighted index to identify which athletes and sports should be particularly targeted for testing."
AOC Secretary-General Fiona de Jong said that "the weighting was based on the general risk of doping in each sport, the likelihood of the athlete being selected and the likelihood of the athlete being a medal contender." De Jong expects that "every athlete eventually named in the 450-strong team will be tested at least once before the Games while those in high-risk categories will be tested multiple times." She said, "We want to hit everyone" (THE AUSTRALIAN, 2/16).
FINA INITIATIVE: The BBC's Matt Slater wrote the world's best swimmers "will face up to seven anti-doping tests in the run up to August's Rio Olympics."
The Int'l Swimming Federation (FINA) "will oversee the initiative after critics said it had not done enough to fight doping."
The testing "will mainly be done by leading national anti-doping agencies." United States Anti-Doping Agency CEO Travis Tygart said, "FINA deserves a lot of credit for embracing the voice of clean athletes." Teaming up with USADA "will be anti-doping agencies from most of the major swimming nations, including UK Anti-Doping" (BBC, 1/15).
