Fewer Olympics Dopers Raises Suspicion

Aug. 21, 2008— -- With four days to go before the closing ceremony of the Beijing Olympics, only five athletes have tested positive for doping.

By comparison, 26 athletes were caught cheating at the Athens Games in 2004. And International Olympic Committee President Jacques Rogge had predicted that 30 to 40 athletes would fail doping tests during the 2008 Games.

To the optimists, this year's figure looks like progress.

But to the cynics -- and several anti-doping researchers -- it's an indication that the dishonest athletes may simply be getting better at avoiding detection.

"It definitely does raise flags when only four test positive," Dr. Anthony Butch, director of the UCLA Olympic Analytical Laboratory, told ABCNews.com before news broke that a fifth athlete, the Ukraine's silver heptathlon medalist, was under investigation for a positive doping test.

"Being suspicious as a lab [researcher], you wonder: Are they slipping through the cracks?" Butch said.

His laboratory is a leading research institution in the field of athletic doping and one of few U.S. laboratories accredited by the World Anti-Doping Agency, an independent, international organization charged with coordinating and monitoring anti-doping efforts in professional sport.

Since the Athens Games four years ago, the anti-doping agency and Olympic committee say they have ramped up anti-doping efforts. In 2004, they administered 3,500 doping tests. This year, the IOC said it will analyze 4,500 blood and urine samples to test for banned substances.

Recognizing that available tests may not be advanced enough to keep up with sophisticated doping methods, the committee also announced that it will store all drug testing samples for eight years. Previously, it stored samples that tested positive for 90 days and samples that tested negative for 30 days.

David Howman, director general of the World Anti-Doping Agency, said Rogge's prediction that up to 40 athletes would fail doping tests this Olympics was only an "off-the-cuff response" and an "arithmetic calculation" based on the figures from the 2004 Olympics.