Ashling O’Connor, Olympic Correspondent
GlaxoSmithKline, the British drug-maker, will build a £10 million laboratory to test thousands of athletes during the 2012 Olympics and Paralympics under a sponsorship deal announced yesterday by London organisers.
It is the first time that an anti-doping programme at an Olympic Games has been sponsored and it will raise eyebrows that it has been supported by a pharmaceutical company.
The cost of running an independent lab required by the IOC to analyse blood and urine samples from competitors has previously been covered by the local organising committee.
The deal was welcomed by anti-drugs campaigners for increasing the resources available to King’s College London, which has been involved in testing at two summer Games and has the contract for 2012, but raised concerns about the commercial interests of the world’s second biggest pharmaceutical company.
GSK will provide equipment and scientists to the lab, which will be accredited by the World Anti-Doping Agency (Wada) and operate from one of the company’s facilities in Hertfordshire or Essex.
David Cowan, the director of the college’s drug control centre, said that the deal would increase his capacity by between ten and 14 times in terms of the number of tests and the scientists at his disposal. More than 5,000 tests were conducted in Beijing last year. London organisers aim to test half of the 10,500 athletes competing at the Olympics and 1,500 athletes at the Paralympics.
“There is no way we could have done it with our existing facility,” he said. “I think this will be a winning solution and the higher volume of testing will act as a deterrent.”
The centre at King’s College conducted more than 8,000 tests across 70 sports last year as part of UK Sport’s anti-doping programme. Cowan stressed its independence from any pharmaceutical group. “There is a definite wall between us,” he said.
However, there are concerns about the potential influence of a company, some of whose products are made with ingredients banned by the IOC.
Substances on Wada’s prohibited list include salbutamol, which is permitted for asthma sufferers under an exemption. Its abuse by athletes as an alternative to clenbuterol, which reduces body fat, means it has been a prohibited substance. From 2010, however, the use of inhaled salbutamol — the key ingredient in Ventolin, GSK’s best-selling asthma treatment — will no longer be banned.
Michele Verroken, an international anti-doping expert, said the involvement of a pharmaceutical company in the anti-doping fight called for greater transparency in the decisions that lead to revisions of the banned list.
She said: “Anti-doping is a huge financial strain on sport so I welcome the extra resources, but I am uncomfortable that some of Glaxo’s products may end up with a more favourable status than others when it comes to therapeutic use exemptions.”
GSK denied that its support of the London 2012 drug-testing programme was commercially motivated. A spokesman said: “Our sponsorship prohibits any leverage of our brands. We cannot put the Olympic rings on Lucozade or Ribena bottles or any of our pharmaceutical products. A better scientific understanding is where our future vested interest is.”
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