Italian Law to Govern Positive Doping Tests

Italian police don’t plan to raid the Olympic village, searching for steroids and other illicit substances, but a positive doping test at the 2006 Winter Games will launch a court case under Italy’s anti-doping laws, officials said Monday.

Mario Pescante, a senior IOC member and Italian government official, said during a news conference that authorities “want to avoid” having police in the village. The prospect of such a scene has been a major issue for the International Olympic Committee.

IOC President Jacques Rogge called the arrangement an “intelligent solution,” emphasizing that the IOC, not the Italian government, would oversee doping controls at the Games.

Transportation, though, may be a problem. Turin 2006 organizers acknowledged challenges in the transit system for these Games. Rogge said later he remained “very confident” that the Games, which open Friday night, “will be very good Games.”

Pescante said he too remained hopeful, concluding a news conference with the Arabic expression, “Insh’Allah,” which means “God willing.”

Rogge, wrapping up a two-day meeting of the executive board before the IOC’s annual assembly, also said auditors had reported an $11-million surplus for the IOC’s 2005 operations. With four days to go before the opening ceremony, Cesare Vaciago, Turin 2006’s chief executive, said too many Turin drivers were using lanes reserved for Olympic traffic. Offenders would be fined, he said. A first offense will draw a ticket of 70 euros, about $83. Tickets for repeat offenders are double that.

Vaciago also said that of 470 drivers assigned to drive official Games vehicles, 400 are locals who know their way around. The 70 others were recruited from the Italian military and have frequently become lost. “We made a mistake, thinking the military would learn very quickly,” Vaciago said.

Now, every soldier-driver has a local assigned to serve as a navigator. Perhaps the most serious transportation issue, however, involves the fleet of buses.

Half are to cruise around Turin, manned by locals. The others are to be driven in the mountains, about an hour out of town, by drivers recruited from around Italy.

When drivers started showing up last week in the mountains, they rejected the housing that had been arranged for them.

Most of those problems have been sorted out, Vaciago said, but drivers from elsewhere are still learning the mountain roads. Two bus lines still moved sluggishly Monday, Vaciago said. Rogge said such issues were to be expected. “It’s always difficult in the last stretch,” he added, insisting that such transport-related woes were not indicative of a “structural under-capacity” that bedeviled the 1996 Atlanta Games.

The IOC intends to conduct 1,200 doping tests during the Games, about a 70% increase over the 2002 Salt Lake City Games. An athlete who tests positive is typically disqualified and expelled from the Games. Under Italian law, doping carries a jail term of up to two years. Few athletes have gone to jail and Pescante said offenders would more likely face “administrative sanctions.”