Leighton Levy, Gleaner Writer

Fennell - File

THE PRESIDENT of the Jamaica Olympic Association (JOA), Mike Fennell, wants the world to know that Jamaican track and field athletes, especially its top athletes, are tested for drugs often, very often.

The JOA president was reacting to comments being made in recent times by critics of Jamaica's athletes and the authorities governing the sport, who say tests are not conducted as often as they should be because the country does not have its own independent drug authority.

"It has been said by some misguided people that Jamaican athletes are not being tested because we don't have a national (drug-testing) programme," Fennell said. "What the world needs to know is that for some years now, not just recently, all our top athletes have been under an out-of-competition testing programme as organised by the International Amateur Athletics Federation (IAAF) and we have several athletes that are tested continuously every year," he said.

Banned

Those 'misguided' people to whom Fennell refers would include Victor Conte, who was jailed for providing some of the biggest names in track and field from the United States with performance enhancing drugs (PEDs). Among the athletes who were subsequently banned from the sport after they were supplied PEDs by Conte were former world-record holder Tim Montgomery and his former girlfriend Marion Jones, who won five medals, including three gold, at the Sydney Games in 2000. Jones is currently serving a six-month prison term for lying to federal prosecutors about her drug use.

Conte, in an interview aired on the CNN Newsroom on December 13, 2007, suggested that the reason some athletes were not being caught was that the countries they represented did not have independent drug-testing programmes and as such, were not subjected to out-of-competition testing.

"In 2004, at the Olympic Games, there were 208 countries that participated," Conte said. "Only 24 of those countries had their own independent anti-doping federations in place. That meant that the other 180-some odd countries, while they were training on home soil ... and I am talking about countries like the Ukraine, and The Bahamas and Jamaica ... and Trinidad, they have no testing federation."

But, according to the JOA president, people like Conte and former Olympic champion Carl Lewis, who has, without calling names, suggested publicly that Jamaica's Asafa Powell was using PEDs, are misinformed.

"I want it to be made known far and wide that Jamaican athletes are under constant observation and are being tested," he said.

He said that last year, Jamaican athletes were tested and tested often.

Numerous tests

"Our athletes were tested many times, in particular those of our athletes that are at the very top," Fennell revealed. "Our world-record holder (Powell) was tested numerous times in 2007 and this is being done through the international programme of the IAAF, together with the World Anti-Doping Association (WADA)."

The test samples, he said, are taken under special conditions and sent to the testing lab in Montreal.

And it does not stop there. Testing could become more rigorous, once teams are selected and the entries submitted for the Summer Games in Beijing.

"Furthermore," Fennell said, "under the rules of the International Olympic Committee (IOC) for the Games (in China) and agreed to by their medical commission and in accordance with the WADA's terms and conditions, all the athletes, once the final entries are in, are exposed to being selected for testing. Entries go in in July and once that is done, we have to be able to tell the whereabouts of any of these athletes. If selected (for testing) and they are not able to be found, the athletes will find themselves in trouble," the JOA chief concluded.<