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 News from Around the Americas | July 2007 
Pan-American Games End Without Positive Dope Test
 BYLINE
| | Performers pose for photographers during the Closing Ceremony for the 2007 XV Pan American Games at Maracana Stadium on July 29, 2007 in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. (Getty) |
Rio de Janeiro - Organizers hailed the 15th Pan-American Games as the cleanest yet after they closed on Sunday without a single positive dope test.
With 5,500 athletes from 42 countries taking part, more than 1,400 tests were conducted without any banned substances detected.
With 12 doping violations at the 2003 Games in Santo Domingo, Mexican IOC member and Pan American Sports Organization (PASO) president Mario Vazquez Rana hailed the lack of positive tests as the major success of the Rio Games.
"Today we are very happy, we have had 1,200 doping tests and until now there hasn't been a single positive case," Rana told reporters during his final media briefing on Saturday, before more than 200 tests were carried out on the final day.
"Rio is on the right track right now to becoming the cleanest Games in history," he added.
"In Santo Domingo in 2003 there were 12 cases. We strengthened PASO's committee which is in charge of doping control and we invested a lot of money so that the Olympic national committees intensified their controls before the Rio Pan-American Games."
"More than 20 committees did the doping testing."
"There were many positive cases but the athletes did not come to Rio."
Since official testing began, the Panam Games has seen a wide swing in the number of positive results from a high of 19 at the 1983 Games in Caracas to just four in 1995 in Mar del Plata, Argentina.
Brazilian volleyball player Jacqueline Carvalho and three unidentified Mexican athletes were banned from competing in Rio after producing positive results in pre-Games testing.
"I think the results show that a lot are getting weeded out before they get to the Panam Games," said World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) chief Dick Pound, who had warned before the start of the Games that samples could be stored and retested later.
"When you know you're going to be tested during a competition not only are you a crook but a stupid crook knowing you're going to get caught," he told Reuters. |
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