IAAF want blood passports

The proposals would give doping authorities a full profile of the natural state of all competitive athletes to allow them to ascertain naturally occurring levels of substances by individual case.

World marathon champion Paula Radcliffe, addressing the conference as a member of the IAAF athletes' commission, urged delegates to support the adoption of the passports.

They would detail individual athletes' physiological make-up and help anti-doping authorities identify abnormal alterations.

Currently testers are only able to compare athletes' samples against pre-set 'average' levels for naturally-occurring substances such as testosterone, potentially allowing athletes with naturally low levels to cheat without fear of detection.

Anti-doping experts say the passports could also be used as an indirect method to pick up hard-to-identify cheating methods, including the use of the blood-boosting drug erythropoietin, or EPO, and blood transfusions.

"Doping threatens our human right to compete fairly on a level playing field," Radcliffe told the symposium.

"For a long time I have advocated the use of blood passports, but it needs expanding to cover all athletes from junior level upwards so that we can pick up on any suspicious developments."

Radcliffe said more also needed to be done to ensure uniform standards for out-of-competition testing.

She suggested that international anti-doping testers should be granted 'diplomatic passports' to carry out unannounced tests in countries where such testing is not common.

"I believe athletes need to be more pro-active," said Radcliffe. "Perhaps that means accepting some infringements against our rights to privacy because we also need to assert our right to fair competition."

WADA BACKING

The call for 'blood passports' was backed by the World Anti Doping Agency whose director general David Howman said the idea had been "on the agency's books" since 2001.

IAAF medical and anti-doping commission chairman Juan Manuel Alonso said a concrete recommendation on the passports could be put to the IAAF council by March 2007, subject to scientific approval at this weekend's symposium.

If accepted by the council, Alonso said the passport scheme could start being used at the 2007 world championships in Osaka.

In his own speech, Howman identified a number of other challenges facing the anti-doping movement, including the problems of divergent 'A' and 'B' tests and the premature leaking of 'A' test results.

He referred to the Marion Jones case, in which the former Olympic champion tested positive for EPO in an 'A' test but was subsequently cleared by the 'B' test.

Howman insisted the laboratory in question would undergo "a full and proper discovery process to see why this occurred".

Howman argued that the laboratories could not, however, be blamed for the leaking of results, since they are never told which athletes' samples are being tested.

"We have carried out our own surveys into this which suggest that in 90 percent of the cases it is actually somebody from the athlete's own entourage who leaks the result," Howman said.

He added that national governments should also take more responsibility to combat doping, particularly in fighting steroid use in general society.

"There is now more money being made from the trafficking of steroids than from the trafficking of so-called social drugs - mainly because steroids remain legal in many countries," Howman said.

Opening the symposium, IAAF president Lamine Diack described doping as a "serious scourge for the future of sport" but said his organisation had an "unshakeable will to continue the war on doping".

On Sunday and Monday, the symposium is set to examine current doping strategies, new doping threats and borderline issues including infusions, blood spinning and controversial devices used for simulating high altitude effects.

Symposium organisers say the resulting recommendations will be passed on for discussion at the 2007 WADA Conference.