PARIS: Nearly 90 per cent of all entrants in the Paris Olympics have been tested this year as part of a pre-Games anti-doping program, the International Testing Agency (ITA) said on Wednesday.
ITA said it had conducted more than 32,600 doping controls this year, an increase of around 45 percent on tests of athletes in the previous six months.
It said the testing "led to over 85 cases of potential anti-doping rule violations, resulting in many sanctions and cases that are still ongoing or under review."
The agency said it had focused on 'high-risk disciplines' in which 75 per cent of Olympic entrants had been tested at least three times.
Those include weightlifting - which represents a quarter of positive cases in the history of the Summer Olympics - as well as triathlon and open water swimming, where every athlete was tested at least once. Gymnastics follows at 99 per cent.
In track and field - which historically has produced the most failed Olympic tests - the number is 89 per cent.
ITA statistics suggest Chinese athletes have been particularly targeted by testers as doping controversy continues to swirl in Paris following the revelation, in April, that 23 Chinese swimmers tested positive ahead of the Tokyo Games three years ago but World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) accepted that they were victims of food contamination.
The testing agency's stats for the top 25 national delegations show that 98 per cent of Chinese Olympic competitors have been tested multiple times this year. Only the Individual Neutral Athletes (AIN) from Russia and Belarus and Hungarians come close, both at 97 per cent.
World Aquatics said on Tuesday that Chinese swimmers competing in Paris have been tested "on average 21 times each since January 1", compared to six times for the Americans, five for the Italians, four for the Australians, British and French.
ITA's list showed that the only delegation to undergo 100 percent testing were AIN entrants – made of Russian and Belarusians – although, at the last count, there are just 33 of them.
Meanwhile, only 63 per cent of footballers have been tested.
Global football federation FIFA is one of the few international bodies not to have entrusted their anti-doping program to the ITA.
The ITA took over the Olympic anti-doping program ahead of the Tokyo Games and now works with most international sports federations.
ITA said its experience in Tokyo had allowed it to "detect gaps."- AFP