Drugs company pledges £10m to increase testing at the Olympics

Ashling O’Connor, Olympic Correspondent

GlaxoSmithKline, the British drug-maker, will build a £10 million laboratory to test thousands of athletes during the 2012 Olympics and Paralympics under a sponsorship deal announced yesterday by London organisers.

It is the first time that an anti-doping programme at an Olympic Games has been sponsored and it will raise eyebrows that it has been supported by a pharmaceutical company.

The cost of running an independent lab required by the IOC to analyse blood and urine samples from competitors has previously been covered by the local organising committee.

The deal was welcomed by anti-drugs campaigners for increasing the resources available to King’s College London, which has been involved in testing at two summer Games and has the contract for 2012, but raised concerns about the commercial interests of the world’s second biggest pharmaceutical company.

GSK will provide equipment and scientists to the lab, which will be accredited by the World Anti-Doping Agency (Wada) and operate from one of the company’s facilities in Hertfordshire or Essex.

David Cowan, the director of the college’s drug control centre, said that the deal would increase his capacity by between ten and 14 times in terms of the number of tests and the scientists at his disposal. More than 5,000 tests were conducted in Beijing last year. London organisers aim to test half of the 10,500 athletes competing at the Olympics and 1,500 athletes at the Paralympics.