The lab where Olympic officials plan to conduct 2,000 urine and blood tests on athletes in February's Vancouver Olympics has been officially certified.
More than 30 technicians will staff the lab around the clock and drivers will deliver samples from the venues to the lab's refrigeration unit for processing.
The lab will be led by Dr Christiane Ayotte, who is the director of the national institute of scientific research - Institut Armand-Frappier.
"The test results should be given to the IOC (International Olympic Committee) within 24 hours," Dr. Christiane Ayotte said on Wednesday after receiving the certification.
"The procedures would be done at the time of the competition therefore shall there be any sanction given and medal withdrawal the athlete to which the medal would be awarded could have a chance of getting it during Game time," she added.
Samples will also be saved for eight years for possible retroactive testing.
Starting with the opening of the athletes' villages on February 4, competitors can be subjected to surprise, out-of-competition tests at any time and any place, including training sites abroad.
Olympic officials will act on tip-offs from informants to target suspected cheaters and collaborate with Canadian law-enforcement authorities to break up any doping networks.
The IOC and the Vancouver organising committee, VANOC, will run the drug-testing programme at the venues, while the World Anti-Doping Agency will coordinate testing outside the Olympic zone.
Athletes are required to give advance notice of their whereabouts for the entire period of the games so they can be located for testing.
They must list a specific one-hour slot each day when they can be found; if they are not there when drug-testers show up, it will count as a missed test.
Drug-testing at the Winter Olympics began in 1968 in Grenoble, with just 86 tests. The number has gradually increased, with the figure reaching 700 tests in Salt Lake City in 2002 and 1,200 in Turin.
There have been 13 official positive tests in 11 Winter Olympics, with more than half (7) coming at the Salt Lake City Games, according to IOC statistics.
Deterrence is another weapon: By storing doping samples for eight years, the IOC can analyse them again whenever new testing methods are developed.
Such was the case last year when the IOC retested samples from the 2008 Beijing Olympics and caught five athletes for using CERA, an advanced version of the blood-boosting drug EPO.
Bahraini runner Rashid Ramzi was stripped of his gold medal in the 1,500m.
In addition to out-of-competition tests, athletes will face standard in-competition controls. The top five finishers will be tested, along with two others at random.
APTN