As the different ways athletes find to cheat evolve, so does the science that eventually finds a way to catch them. Now Olympic officials and scientific experts will meet next month to discuss a test designed to nab those gene doping, which is considered the next step in sports cheating.
“Quite some progress has been made in terms of outlining the scientific basis for analysis of gene doping,” IOC medical commission chairman Arne Ljungqvist told the Associated Press on Thursday. “We are moving. It’s promising.”
The meeting, which will take place in Beijing on June 5 and 6, is the fourth major symposium on gene doping and will include forty experts who’ve been organized by the World Anti-doping Agency following two different teams who’ve possibly already discovered a way to test for gene doping.
WADA and the IOC say that no athletes are currently using gene doping to cheat, but that it’s only a matter of time before they discover how. And instead of trying to catch up, they’d rather be ahead of the curve.
“We want to continue the momentum that we’ve got so we can get to a scenario where the detection methods can be approved,” WADA director general David Howman said. “It’s close.”