‘Serious failings’ in Olympic drug tests

EFFORTS to crack down on doping at the Rio Olympics suffered from “serious failings”, according to a report by the world’s leading anti-doping agency.

Many athletes who had been targeted in Brazil for testing “simply could not be found” and on some days half of all tests were aborted, said the World Anti-Doping Agency (Wada).

Its report by a team of independent observers at the Games said there was a “lack of coordination or unified approach among the management team in the Rio 2016 anti-doping department during the Olympic Games”.

Wada’s report did praise improvements made to Rio’s anti-doping laboratory, however.

The organisation had suspended the lab just six weeks before the Games opened, because it failed to comply with international standards.

But Wada said it had been “superbly equipped”, and was “operated very securely and generally very efficiently”.

It said it now represents an “outstanding legacy from the Games for the anti-doping movement in South America”.

However, other “failings” highlighted in the report include inadequate support for the chaperones employed to notify athletes of testing.

Wada said that on several occasions more than half of these failed to turn up, or turned up very late. It said they were “disincentivised” because of a lack of training, poor travel arrangements, and the fact many could not speak English.