|
 |   |
EVENTS Fantasy Central Inside Game Multimedia Central Statitudes Your Turn Message Boards Email Newsletters Golf Guide Cities Work in Sports
CNNSI.com GROUP
COMMERCE |  |
Easier to detect Officials hope to use new doping test at Tour de France
Posted: Tuesday May 23, 2000 03:07 PM
PARIS (AP) -- Tour de France officials are hoping to put to use a new doping test to detect the banned hormone erythropoietin or EPO, in urine samples, French cycling federation sources were quoted as saying in a news report Tuesday. L'Equipe, a French sports newspaper, reported that a meeting was scheduled to take place in Geneva on Thursday to decide on measures to improve doping controls during the Tour, which starts July 1. A spokesman for the International Cycling Union in Geneva confirmed that a meeting was to take place on Thursday at the request of the French Sports Ministry and it would be "on subjects linked to doping controls." The spokesman, contacted by telephone, declined to be named. The French news report said that the International Olympic Committee had not yet approved the test, but French sports authorities wanted it put to use immediately. EPO, which enhances endurance by boosting the production of oxygen-rich red blood cells in the body, was at the center of the Tour de France drug scandal two years ago and is believed widely used in several sports. Thursday's meeting was to be chaired by International Cycling Union President Hein Verbruggen and attended by Tour director Jean-Marie Leblanc. Others at the meeting will be French cycling federation president Daniel Baal and Jacques de Ceaurriz, head of the French laboratory working on the new test, the paper reported.
| ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
