The “biological passport,” an innovative way of detecting blood doping in cycling, and perhaps many other Olympic sports, has been approved by the Court of Arbitration of Sport, regarded as the supreme court of sport.
The approval of the passport program came in a case of two racers disqualified because the passport process showed that they had manipulated their blood over a period of time.
The program, which was adopted by the International Cycling Union in 2008, takes samples of blood from athletes over a period of time, and looks for telltale signs of changes in certain characteristics of the blood, changes which have been proved to indicate either the use of EPO of transfusions to enrich the athletes’ blood.
With the court’s approval, according to the article in the New York Times, the hopes is that the program can go beyond cycling and include skating, track and field and soccer.
