IN BRIEF : Drug Lab Offered for Olympic Tests

Summer Olympic sports are being offered the use of a million-dollar mobile drug laboratory by the International Olympic Committee in the hope they will adopt tougher anti-doping policies, including unannounced testing during practice.

The IOC plan, similar to one that failed to win approval last year, would eliminate several major hurdles to almost universal drug testing in Olympic sports.

The IOC’s executive board sent a five-part Agreement for the Prevention of Doping in Sport to the Assn. of International Summer Sports Federations, as both groups met here this week. It asked the federations to adopt uniform lists of banned drugs, procedures for drug testing and penalties for those found using drugs to enhance performance. In those ways, the plan was similar to both a plan submitted a year ago by the IOC to the same group and one shelved by a broader association of sports federations last November.

The latest effort is sweetened by the proposal that the federations use a “flying lab” being developed by the IOC.