FIFA introduce blood testing to combat dope

Within days of the Winter Olympics finishing, Fifa's medical commission reacted swiftly to the emergence of another sinister drug in sport. Last weekend Fifa's executive committee announced that, for the first time, there will be blood-testing at this summer's World Cup. Chris Nawrat reports

WHEN Johann Muehlegg, a German who has skied for Spain since 1999, was stripped of his gold medal for the 50-kilometer cross-country for testing positive for darbepoetin, alarm bells went off in a number of major sports. Not least in football.

Darbepoetin, which in its medical form is used to treat anemia and severe kidney problems, is a derivative of the banned blood-boosting drug erythropoetin or EPO, which was at the heart of the 1998 Tour de France scandal. But it is not detectable by the standard urine test.

Like EPO, darepoetin, stimulates the body's production of oxygen-carrying red blood cells. Its performance-enhancing affect for endurance athletes borders on the miraculous - an immediate 10% improvement. Given the heat, humidity and the rapid number of games in the World Cup finals in Japan and Korea, it is not surprising that Fifa's medical commission reacted swiftly to the emergence of yet another endurance-enhancing drug.

Hence the blood testing at the World Cup. Since the 1998 Tour de France fiasco sports medical science has been in overdrive to perfect a test for EPO and its relatives. And by the Sydney Olympics they had cracked it. Fifa refuse to say whether they think EPO, or its derivatives, is currently a problem in football, although there have been allegations in Italy that a leading member of the French World Cup-winning squad used EPO.

"We have to cope with what is happening in other sports and deal with what has been discovered at the Salt Lake City Olympic Games," said Prof Dvorak, the chief medical officer for Fifa and the World Cup. "Of course we are worried, that's why we have introduced the tests. New methods of detection must be applied. And now we have very good evidence that EPO and darbepoetin can be detected in combined urine and blood tests. Since the Sydney Olympics, the laboratories have more experience and more expertise."

Alan Hodgson, the FA's chief medical officer, welcomes Fifa's move. "EPO is a problem in athletics. And EPO is all about helping endurance, and football is about 90 minutes and therefore endurance is a big factor, so EPO shouldn't be discounted. There's no point in turning a blind eye."