A top International Olympic Committee (IOC) official said it was unclear if the suspended anti-doping laboratory for the Rio de Janeiro Olympics can be reopened before the Games start in just less than six weeks.
“This is something that is doable, but there are a number of steps that need to be taken,” Olympic Games executive director Christophe Dubi said on Sunday.
The World Anti-doping Agency (WADA) on Friday last week announced it had suspended the Rio lab.
Dubi said the suspension was for “wrongly interpreting” test results and producing “false positives.”
Thousands of blood and urine tests would need to be shipped abroad if the lab remains closed, another major embarrassment to Games organizers who have faced problems from the Zika virus to budget cuts and slow ticket sales.
Lab officials on Friday said they expected “operations to return to normal in July.”
Brazil’s anti-doping authority, known as ABCD and run by the Brazilian Ministry of Sports, shared the same view.
Dubi said it was up to WADA to send in experts and restart the accreditation process. He did not offer a timeframe.
The Rio lab was recertified earlier this year after being put on a watch list last year by WADA.
Dubi said enough time remained to recertify the lab, although he hedged when asked if testing would be done in Brazil.
“Hopefully,” he said.
Dubi acknowledged shipping thousands of samples abroad was not ideal. This is the same way testing was done for the soccer World Cup in Brazil in 2014.
“Of course it is not as easy as if you can do the testing here, because then you have the whole logistics around it, but that’s what the experts have to evaluate,” Dubi said.
“What is essential is that at Games time we can guarantee the integrity of the testing,” he added.
The International Association of Athletics Federations referred to a “systematic and deeply-rooted culture of doping” in Russia. Kenya, home to many of the world’s top distance runners, has also been hit by dozens of positive drug cases.
The IOC last month said that more than 50 athletes had tested positive in reanalysis of their doping samples from the 2012 London Olympics and 2008 Beijing Games.
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