January 2, 2014
Athletes' biological passports will track steroid use
SPORTS cheats beware. As of 1 January, professional athletes became subject to routine checks on steroid concentrations in their urine. These tests won’t be used to spot specific drugs, but to form a baseline by which to detect any future suspicious deviations from the athlete’s normal physiology. The checks have been added to the World Anti-Doping Agency’s “biological passport”, a procedure for monitoring every athlete’s metabolic profile.