Organizers defend policy of drug-testing at Paralympics

LONDON - Agence France-Presse

London Paralympics organizers yesterday defended their decision not to drug-test every medal winner at the Games, insisting that the procedures were tight enough to prevent dope-cheats prospering.

The International Paralympic Committee said it expected to carry out some 1,250 tests at the Games, a 25 percent increase on the number conducted in Beijing four years ago. But unlike at the Olympics, where every gold, silver and bronze medalist had to give samples, not every medal winner will undergo testing at this edition of the Paralympics.

The president of the IPC’s anti-doping committee, Jose Antonio Pascual, said analyzing samples from every medalist would be impossible, as there were 503 golds on offer compared with about 300 at the Olympics.

“The IPC anti-doping programs, as in previous Games, (tries) to cover all countries and all sports. But the fact is that at the Paralympic Games, we have a lot of medal events... around 500,” he told a news conference. “That makes testing for every single athlete having gold, silver and bronze not possible.”