Authorities aware that new wave of cheating is in blood

Published on Thursday 23 February 2006 00:20

THEY call it blood on feet. You are an Olympic athlete. You bring a friend to the Games. The friend donates blood. You inject it, it increases your oxygen-rich red blood cells and you perform better. A simple procedure that requires no drugs - but which is banned under world sports rules and which can be deadly.

The discovery of needles and a blood transfusion kit in the Austrian biathlon and cross-country team bases last weekend has trained a spotlight on blood doping and the cat-and-mouse game some athletes play with Olympic authorities. No violation has been found. But the results of tests on ten Austrian athletes have yet to be released, and the team faces a disciplinary investigation to probe possible doping offences.

Austrian Ski Federation chief Peter Schroecksnadel played down the raids. "There were syringes and transfusion equipment," he said. "But with medical support this is legitimate."

Blood transfusions are illegal but needles alone may not be. However, Patrick Schamasch, the International Olympic Committee's medical director said: "The syringes may constitute a piece of the puzzle which may lead to a presumption. Presumption may be enough to open an investigation," he said.

At the centre of the Austrian controversy is Walter Mayer, who was banned from the Olympics after a 2002 doping scandal. Mayer said his technique of radiating blood with ultraviolet light was therapeutic and not performance-enhancing. Pound called Mayer's explanations "a bunch of nonsense".

Blood transfusions are nothing new. Before the 1968 Games in Mexico City, some athletes trained for half a year at high altitudes to raise their haemoglobin. "But it was costly and complicated for the cheaters," Schamasch said. "So they said, 'why not re-inject blood?'" Some athletes turned to the banned substance erythropoeitin (EPO), which increases red blood cells. "It was easy and widely used by cheaters at Sydney and Salt Lake City," Schamasch said. "Then we found a way to find EPO." That drove cheaters back to transfusions. The easiest method was to bring a compatible donor - "blood on feet".

Before Athens, experts developed a test to detect a donor's blood. But there is still no reliable way to catch athletes who re-inject blood into themselves. Tests for EPO and donated blood, plus the risk of contamination and even death from manipulating one's own blood, may have led to a cutback in transfusions.

"It's very uncommon in skiing," said Bengt Satlin, the International Ski Federation's medical chief. Asked about the 12 skiers who tested for abnormally high haemoglobin at Turin, he said: "It is due to training at high altitude for too long, too high."