IOC president Jacques Rogge confident that any dopers will be caught at Vancouver Games

Rogge: No tolerance for doping in Vancouver

LAUSANNE, Switzerland — IOC president Jacques Rogge is confident that out-of-competition testing and work with Canadian authorities will stamp out drug cheats at the Vancouver Games.

Rogge said Thursday that the lessons of the last two Winter Olympics proved the effectiveness of surprise doping controls and police action when needed. The same strategy will be used next month in Canada, where 2,000 doping tests will be conducted at the Feb. 12-28 Olympics.

“We have a zero-tolerance policy for doping,” Rogge said at the International Olympic Committee’s headquarters. “We are going to continue our policy of unannounced, out-of-competition testing. This is a weapon to trace the cheats. We’re also going to store the samples for eight years, like we did in Beijing.”

Months after the 2008 Beijing Olympics, a new test for the endurance booster CERA led to retroactive tests that caught five athletes, including 1,500-meter winner Rashid Ramzi of Bahrain. He has since been banned and stripped of his gold medal.

Rogge praised the efforts in Salt Lake City in 2002, when unannounced controls allowed officials to expel three dopers, and in Turin in 2006, when close work with Italian authorities led to a police raid that uncovered blood doping among Austrian cross-country skiers and biathletes.

Athletes will be targeted for testing if they show suspicion of doping, Rogge said.

“If we see an athlete is disappearing out-of-competition to reappear, we want to know why,” he said. “If at a certain moment we see an athlete is augmenting his performance in a way that is not very natural … we are going to target this or that athlete.”

Where laws prevent Olympic officials from doing anything more, they will seek the help of Canadian authorities, Rogge said.

Cooperation will be key in minimizing the threat of terrorism at the games, he said.

The IOC expressed overall confidence in Vancouver’s preparations.

Olympic Games executive director Gilbert Felli said the local organizing committee’s budget will be balanced or show “cash flow,” but the figures will be known only after the games.

Felli said warm weather is expected in western Canada in the coming days, and perhaps some rain. But it is expected to get cold again, with no threat to the marquee skiing events.

Cypress Mountain — site for snowboarding and freestyle skiing — was closed Wednesday to the public 2½ weeks earlier than planned to preserve the snow following several days of rain and warm weather.

“It is not a concern,” Felli said. “When it was cold, they made a reserve of snow.”

In a separate interview with The Associated Press, Rogge said weather is always a challenge at the Winter Games, noting that the downhill at the 1984 Sarajevo Games had to be postponed until the final day because of too much snow.

“In general it is easier to correct too little snow than too much snow,” Rogge said. “With too little snow you can work with the snow machines. If you have too much snow, rearranging the tracks is always very time consuming. Today there is absolutely no major concern, but of course we are monitoring that very closely.”

AP Sports Writer Stephen Wilson in London contributed to this report.