WADA chief warns growth hormone cheats to stay away

Athletes who have used the banned substance human growth hormone (HGH) should stay away from the Beijing Olympics or risk getting caught, the president of the World Anti-Doping Agency said yesterday.

Australian John Fahey said test kits would be available a few days before the Aug. 8-24 Games and could detect prior use of HGH in blood samples.

"I would say to any athlete coming here with HGH in their system, beware," he told reporters in Beijing.

"There is a belief that you can manage it out of your system very quickly. I don't think any athlete who wishes to cheat should put faith in that statement any longer."

The former Australian finance minister said the test was an important weapon in the battle to catch drugs cheats, a battle which would be joined by a record 4,500 tests in Beijing.

"There's more chance of them getting caught, if they wish to cheat, in these Games than ever before," he said.

The fight against doping has suffered several blows in the last few years after high-profile scandals involving cycling's Tour de France and Olympic champions like Marion Jones.

Fahey, who replaced the founding president of WADA Dick Pound at the start of the year, said he thought his new role was "an enormous challenge" and "one of the defining issues of our times".

"Is there a perfect solution to this? No, science has not delivered it," he said.

"We are closer to the finishing line than we were last year but I'm not sure we'll ever reach the tape."

Fahey said WADA needed to continue to change tactics to catch the cheats and he wanted even more involvement of governments in what he considered a public health issue.

Fahey also expressed a hope that sanctions against those testing positive would become uniform around the world - particularly when WADA's new punishment code becomes effective in 2009 - to end cases like British sprinter Dwain Chambers.

Chambers is unable to run in the Beijing Games because, despite having served his ban, the British Olympic Association (BOA) gives lifetime Olympic bans to all athletes who have tested positive for drugs

"He's done his time yet he's not eligible to be selected," he said.

"That's one of their rules. I'd prefer to see harmonised penalties being imposed."

FINA became the first international sports federation this week to adopt the World Anti Doping Agency's (WADA) revised code. The new code, which comes into play in January 2009, will allow greater flexibility in sanctions, particularly in cases where athletes may have used medicines prohibited under the code, such as asthma inhalers, decongestants or alopecia treatments.

Under the revised code, athletes testing positive for WADA's "specified substances" can avoid or reduce their sanctions by demonstrating how they were not at fault or did not intend to enhance their performance.

Italian rider Eddy Mazzoleni has been banned for two years for his involvement in a long-running doping scandal, the Italian Cycling Federation said. The federation said the 34-year-old was guilty of "attempted use of (a) forbidden substance and/or method".

It said the charges stemmed from the Oil for Drugs investigation into the activities of Carlo Santuccione, a doctor accused of supplying doping products to athletes.