More than a month after the Paris Olympics, the International Testing Agency (ITA), responsible for the anti-doping program during the competition, delivered its first data on Thursday. Thus, 6,130 samples (urine, blood, dried blood) were taken from 4,770 controls on 4,150 athletes, the agency details. Nearly 39% of athletes were therefore tested, which is “the largest proportion” in the history of the Games.
The ITA has carried out targeted tests, “nearly two-thirds” of which took place during the competition itself, and the rest outside (in the Olympic village, for example). Among the countries most tested are the United States, France, China, Australia and Great Britain. In the end, five positive cases have been detected at this stage, without the agency saying more for the moment.
9,000 athletes tested at least once in recent months
A testing programme several weeks before the Olympics, a high-risk period, was also carried out, which meant that around 90% of the approximately 10,000 participants in the Paris Games were tested at least once, the ITA said. During this period, around forty anti-doping rule violations were recorded.
Created in 2018 and partly funded by the International Olympic Committee (IOC), the ITA plans, organizes and manages the results of doping controls during the Games. It has already worked in Tokyo in 2021, where six cases of doping were detected, then in Beijing in 2022, where the case of the young Russian skater Kamila Valieva, tested before the Olympics for trimetazidine and ultimately suspended for four years, caused a stir.
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