Speed skater Claudia Pechstein was banned for two years (Image: Matt Dunham/PA)
ATHLETES be warned: the way illegal doping is detected is on the cusp of a radical change.
On 2 December, the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) released guidelines on the long-awaited “athlete biological passport”, a way to spot cheats by monitoring them for suspicious changes in normal physiology. The method would be used in addition to testing for specific drugs.
The passport, which consists of a regularly updated record of blood measurements for each athlete, was first suggested in 2002 and is already being piloted by several sports federations,…
