Any drug cheats beware ? testing for performance-enhancing substances is coming!

In addition, random testing for recreational drugs is slated to resume later this month as the crackdown on drugs in local sport assumes greater scope.

Last June, Bermuda became a signatory to the World Anti-Doping Association (WADA) protocol which champions clean sport, free from performance-enhancing drugs. In keeping with that step, chairman of the Bermuda Council for Drug Free Sport (BCDS) Jon Beard says random testing for performance-enhancing drugs will become the norm in Bermudian sport though specific segments of the sporting community will be targeted.

"The top-level Elite Athletes that Government sponsors would definitely be in the testing pool. Then we need to go to each sport and say 'Who have you got at that level?' because the WADA Code is aimed at elite athletes.

"So each national sport-governing body must have a pool of athletes who will be subjected to random performance-enhancing testing," Beard explained.

Random testing for performance-enhancing drugs would also be enforced for all high-level competition such as World Cup qualifiers. While it has not been done wholesale in the past, the BCDS carried out such tests for the last Olympics and at previous Bermuda International Race Weekends as it was part of that event's budget.

It is also quite a costly undertaking, Beard noted.

"This is a much bigger issue because it's much more expensive. You're looking at about $400 per test. The tests have to be couriered off island and there's only three labs in North America that do the testing. We normally send ours to Montreal (Canada) and then the results come back here."

The BCDS chairman also revealed that random testing for recreational drugs ? which was suspended in mid-2004 because of financial constraints ? will recommence later this month.

"What happened was that our funding was reduced dramatically due to a cut in the NDC's (National Drug Commission) budget. That trickled down to all the groups that the NDC have responsibility for funding.

"As a result we did not have funding to continue with the random drug testing which is part of our mandate," said Beard.

All the BCDS could afford was testing for Bermuda national teams and therefore testing at the domestic level was temporarily halted.

"It was a question of how would we best apportion our money. We looked at the demands of the national sports-governing bodies regarding international competitions and saw what money we had. I think we actually did very well.

"We have managed to be fiscally prudent and to keep our budget down and we're waiting for our new budget from NDC. They have promised us that they would be able to fund random testing in the future."

Beard said the BCDS would restart testing for recreational drugs with funds remaining from last year's budget while they await this year's budgetary allocation, part of which will be used to continue the programme.

A minimum of five percent of a sport's testing pool is subjected to drug testing. Using football as an example, Beard noted that five percent of each club or team's players could therefore be summoned for drug tests.