By Tom Degun
October 27 – The World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) laboratory in Rio de Janeiro is facing an investigation after it falsely reported that Brazilian beach volleyball player Pedro Solberg tested positive for doping.
The facility in Rio, headed by Professor Francisco, is Brazil’s only WADA-accredited laboratory and one of only 36 on the planet.
It is expected to play a major role in testing samples from athletes at the FIFA 2014 World Cup, with the issue of doping in football having grown in magnitude following a failed test from high profile for Manchester City and Ivory Coast defender Kolo Touré earlier this year.
The lab is also set to test athletes at the Rio 2016 Olympics and Paralympics, but its future has now been thrown into question after Solberg gave WADA an out-of-competition sample in May this year that researchers at the facility in Rio said contained testosterone.
The International Volleyball Federation (FIVB) provisionally suspended Solberg but lifted the sanction against the 25-year-old from Rio just one month later when the Brazilian laboratory delayed analysing the B sample.
FIVB’s experts questioned the Brazilian paperwork when the B test confirmed the presence of banned drugs and ordered retests from the leading WADA laboratory in Cologne, Germany, which showed that the sample was in fact clean with no traces of testosterone.
“In this important battle against doping, we cannot afford to be losing confidence in the analytical results of WADA-accredited laboratories,” FIVB President Jizhong Wei said in a statement.
“As much as we need to identify and sanction those who cheat, we must ensure that no athlete is faced with a false positive.
FIVB have asked WADA to investigate why the Cologne laboratory findings contradicted those of the laboratory in Rio to ensure that such an error does not occur again.
“We trust that WADA will carefully look into this regrettable incident and will succeed in further harmonizing the analytical procedures used by the laboratories,” said Roald Bahr, the President of the FIVB Medical Commission.
The problem is not the only doping related issue plaguing Latin America at present after the 2011 Pan American Games here in Mexico have been plagued by the issue contaminated meat in Mexico containing the banned anabolic steroid clenbuterol.
The issue was very much a live one heading into the event but dramatically increased in scale last week after tests conducted by a laboratory in Germany showed the majority of players who competed at the FIFA Under-17 World Cup in Mexico earlier this year returned positive doping tests due to the contaminated meat, with 19 of the 24 teams having squad members with traces of clenbuterol in their bodies.
The Guadalajara 2011 Organising Committee have promised meat in the Athlete’s Village is “100 per cent safe”, with teams saying they are taking every precaution to avoid the problem by not letting athletes eat meat outside the walls of the complex.
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