FIFA considers biological passports to fight doping

ZURICH, (Reuters) – Soccer’s governing body FIFA will  work with the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) to step up the  pressure on drug cheats in the sport, possibly with  cycling-style biological passports.

“This is a strategy which could be extremely beneficial in  the next few years,” WADA president John Fahey told reporters  after meeting his opposite number Sepp Blatter at FIFA  headquarters on yesterday.

“We welcome this partnership and we are happy that such an  important sport is prepared to work with us,” he added, although  he warned it could take time to implement.
“It will not necessarily bring results straight away.”

Since January 2008, the International Cycling Union (UCI)  has collected blood samples from all professional riders to  create a medical profile that would be compared with data  registered in anti-doping tests.

“This is a long-term project and it’s worthwhile exploring,”  said FIFA chief medical officer Jiri Dvorak, adding that FIFA  carried out 33,000 doping tests each year.

“Of these, 0.3 percent test positive and these are mostly  with social drugs such as marijuana and cocaine,” said Dvorak.  He said 0.03 percent of the 33,000 tested positive for positive  for performance-enhancing drugs.

FIFA and WADA were until recently involved in a series of  disputes, mainly over the controversial whereabouts rule which  requires athletes to give three months’ notice of where they  will be for an hour each day.

However, the two sides have patched up their differences and  Fahey said FIFA was now up to scratch with WADA regulations.

“FIFA has a robust and extensive anti-doping programme and  … is fully compliant with the World Anti-Doping committee,” he  said. “The FIFA programme is a very good programme.”

FIFA president Blatter said the sport was doing all it  could.
“I was too candid when I said there are no drugs in  football,” he said. “33,000 (tests) is the optimum. We can’t do  more than that.”