Pound confirms test for HGH at Athens Games

Anti-doping chief confirmed on Thursday there would be a test for human growth hormone at the Olympics which open on Friday.

World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) president Dick Pound confirmed on Thursday there would be a test for human growth hormone (HGH) at the Athens Olympics which open on Friday.

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"We have a test," Pound told a news conference. "The parameters of the test we are keeping to ourselves.

"If there are people taking this we are going to be able to find them."

HGH is used by the medical profession to promote normal growth and misused by athletes to stimulate muscle and tissue growth.

This year double world sprint champion Kelli White was banned for two years after admitting taking a range of banned performance-enhancing drugs including HGH.

She is one of several prominent US athletes who have either been banned or who have received letters from the United States Anti-Doping Agency (USADA) alleging serious doping violations following an investigation into the BALCO laboratory in California.

The federal inquiry was initiated after USADA received a syringe of the previously undetectable steroid THG (tetrahydrogestrinone).

CRITICAL

Pound, who suggested disbanding USA Track & Field (USATF) two years ago because of what he called its poor record on doping problem, was again critical of the American authorities.

"A lot of the difficulty has been that there is simply a lack of no tolerance for cheating," he said.

"Unless and until that message goes out and there's some stringent measures to ensure it happens, it's kind of an invitation to flirt out there at the edges.

"I really think you've got to get the genie back in the bottle and make clear to the people around the athletes that it's not racehorses they are exploiting.

"These are people whose lives they are ruining by encouraging them to use these drugs."

Pound said THG had gone from the laboratory benches into the bodies of athletes without any testing.

"Nobody has got the faintest idea of what the side-effects may be," he said. "It's reckless and dangerous."

He also expressed concern that blood-boosting drugs such as EPO (erythropoietin) were readily available to athletes seeking to improve their performances illegitimately.

"It's disturbing to find there are no controls, medical controls or regulatory controls, to prevent the average person getting hold of this material," he said.

Irish 10,000 metres runner Cathal Lombard admitted this week he had taken EPO. Pound said there was already a comprehensive out-of-competition dope-testing programme in operation at the Games.

Asked how many tests would be conducted, he replied: "It's in the hundreds."

Kenyan boxer David Munyasia, who has been thrown out of the Games after testing positive for a recreational drug, failed one of these tests.