JOHANNESBURG: Brazil has to foot part of the bill to fly World Cup footballers’ blood and urine samples to Switzerland for doping tests, FIFA’s chief medical officer said yesterday.
The world footballing body will test samples in Lausanne after the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) revoked the accreditation of laboratories in Rio de Janeiro.
“We will negotiate with the Brazilian government to contribute, because it is not the fault of FIFA,” said FIFA’s Jiri Dvorak.
“The re-accreditation in this short period of time is not possible for the laboratory in Rio,” he said on the sidelines of the World Conference on Doping in Sport.
“Plan B is that we will transport these samples to Switzerland, to Lausanne, this is the laboratory which has had most experience also with the biological profile.”
The body decided on Switzerland over Cologne in Germany because of daily flights from Sao Paulo, he added.
“Of course there are increased costs but it’s not that severe,” said Dvorak, without giving figures since FIFA is still collecting quotes.
“In comparison with the entire cost of the biological profile it will be not that scary,” he added.
The biological profile called a biological passport will keep football players on their toes during next year’s World Cup.
Some teams may also be tested twice.
“We have to test all the players, so we will be testing probably somewhere between 700 to 800 players in the period after the draw, until they arrive in Brazil,” said Dvorak. Doping authorities build a database of tests on athletes, which helps to detect deviations outside normal levels in each individual.
This will be the sign of the use of a banned substance, as opposed to simply testing for the presence of specific substances in their blood or urine.
“We are gathering silently data together so the athletes can’t be really sure what we have in the box, and we can always compare to this,” said Dvorak.
“And this is the idea: to be more deterrent, and to make the athletes insecure because they can’t change their genetical blueprint.”
Global sporting leaders are discussing the future of the battle against illegal performance-enhancers in Johannesburg. AFP
