Thursday, August 09, 2012
It's easy for doping cheats to prosper in London - Conte
LONDON (Reuters) - Victor Conte, convicted owner of the now-defunct BALCO laboratory that was at the centre of a global steroid scandal, said on Thursday that the drug-testing programme at the 2012 Olympics was irrelevant.
"It's basically propaganda to come out and say this is the most expensively-tested Games ever and 'we're doing 6,000 tests'," Conte was quoted as telling The Times newspaper.
BALCO founder Victor Conte arrives at federal courts in San Francisco, California February 15, 2008. REUTERS/Kimberly White"You have to put your hook and line in the water when the fish are biting and that was nine months ago. Is it easy to use drugs and benefit during (the) Olympics? Yes."
The British newspaper also quoted Conte as estimating that "60 percent of athletes at the Games were on drugs".
Scientists have been working around the clock at a specially equipped anti-doping laboratory on the outskirts of London analysing more than 6,000 urine and blood samples during the Games.
Any of the 10,000-plus competitors can be required to test anytime, anywhere -- trackside, poolside, in the athletes' village or in private houses -- and several have already been thrown out of the Olympics for doping.
Conte's BALCO laboratory in San Francisco supplied drugs to leading athletes including Britain's Dwain Chambers who was banned for two years after testing positive for the designer steroid THG in 2003.
Chambers was picked for the London Games after becoming eligible for selection in May when the British Olympic Association's policy of lifetime Olympic bans for drug cheats was overturned by the Court of Arbitration for Sport.
Conte was sentenced in 2005 to spend four months in prison and another four on house arrest.
(Writing by Tony Jimenez; Editing by Daniel Magnowski)
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