Players at upcoming FIFA World Cup to undergo new doping tests

Players at the FIFA World Cup in Brazil will reportedly undergo new doping tests, which scientists are hoping will cut out the use of performance-enhancing drugs.

Scientists will store the players' blood and urine samples, which would be compared with samples taken in previous competitions to check if there are any discrepancies, for a number of years in order to re-analyze them in the future.

Doping experts said that the performance-enhancing drugs, which are undetectable using the current testing methods, might be picked up later using the stored samples of the players and that would help track any changes in the players' biological make-up over time, the Guardian reported.

FIFA's chief medical officer Professor Jiri Dvorak said that the fight against doping has intensified over the last 10 to 15 years, adding that the increase of simple sampling procedures both in and out of competition controls does not stop some athletes to continue with doping strategies.

Dvorak said that they discussed if the athletes, or their supporting personnel, are a step ahead of the science and if the current strategy of drug-testing is the right one, because the strategy had been developed in the late 1960s and the world of sport has changed since then.

The Professor said that there is strong evidence that if one re-analyses the samples from the past years the new methods would find the drugs.

Dvorak said that as most of the international federations decided to freeze the samples for a number of years, FIFA would start doing the same from the 2014 World Cup.

Dvorak said that the method would act as a doping deterrent as athletes would never be able to predict whether or not their currently undetectable substances would be found in the future.

Dvorak said that they would examine all the participating players in the preparation period between now and the World Cup at least once and then they will perform routine procedure during the World Cup, adding that they would compare this data with already existing sample analysis from Champions League, from the Confederations Cup 2013 and the Club World Cup from 2011, 2012 and 2013, the report added.