Randy Treadway writes: >Item 1: >TOKYO (AP) -- The International Olympic Committee meets July 31- >Aug. 1 in Lausanne, Switzerland, to review a blood test and a >French-developed urine test for EPO, the hormone erythropoietin, >and to decide if a test for EPO will be ready for the Sydney Games. >[snip]... >Item 2: >The Kenyan federation decided to dump marathon runners Moses Tanui, >Elijah Lagat and Japhet Kosgei from the Kenyan Olympic team and >replace them with Eric Wainana, Kennedy Cheruiyot and Ondoro Osoro. >[snip]... >Of course these two news items are entirely coincidental and >no relation between the two events should be construed. That might be a possible scenario. However, there's something else to remember here, too. If EPO tests are imminent, should the athletes currently using EPO not want to go totally "state-of-the-art" with perfluorocarbon blood substitutes or something even more vogue we don't even know about yet, look for them to fall back on good old blood-doping. Yep, it's definitely a more inconvenient procedure, but surely we don't expect them to just give up the ghost because of another little easily sidestepped test, do we? For concerned athletes who have been keeping an eye peeled toward the progress of EPO testing developments in Australia, France, etc., they probably will have already been well along executing their timeline for "Plan B": Donating all the packed and frozen red cells they need to reinject by now as a backup plan, just in case. After all, they would already be quite used to getting stuck repeatedly with a needle--it just has to stay stuck in your arm longer with blood doping is all. But they're big boys and girls. They can take it. D-Day for making a decision about whether to forgo EPO for blood-doping will come about 4 weeks before the Games--the time horizon for EPO detectability with the currently proposed tests. --Ward Nicholson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
