Samples from athletes competing in the ongoing Beijing Olympics will be kept for eight years for doping retests, on top of what is being done in line with standard procedures, Games organizers said yesterday.

Chen Zhiyu, head of the anti-doping division of the Beijing Organizing Committee of the 29th Olympic Games (BOCOG), made the remarks in response to a question at a press conference, on whether the division is introducing new technologies or considering new substances in doping tests amid world records being broken in the swimming and track events.

"We make no exceptions to any particular event when it comes to doping tests," Chen said.

"We've reminded staff at all checkpoints not to analyze or make judgments based merely on players' performance."

Still, samples of athletes will be frozen for eight years and could be retested as more advanced testing techniques are developed, Chen said.

Previously, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) stored samples that tested positive for 90 days and samples that tested negative for 30 days.

Chen made it clear that testing is tailored to different competitions and vary according to the unique characteristics of each event, and are based on the anti-doping rules of the IOC. Only the IOC has the right to decide and announce the test results, he said.

The latest announcement from BOCOG follows a slew of world sporting records being broken in the past week.

The venue for the swimming events, the National Aquatics Center, has witnessed 22 new world records as of Saturday, exceeding the total number set in both the Athens and Sydney Olympics. Michael Phelps of the US alone has won an unprecedented eight gold medals in this Games.

In the men's 100m sprint final on Saturday night, Jamaica's Usain Bolt won the race in 9.69 sec, a new world record.

Chen said the labs in Beijing are capable of testing all the banned substances listed by the world's anti-doping agencies.

"All the medalists are subject to doping tests," he said.

A total of 4,500 doping tests are scheduled for the Beijing Games, about 25 percent higher than those in the Athens Games, BOCOG has said.

The IOC said on Friday it had completed more than 2,200 doping tests, including pre-competition tests.

Three doping cases have surfaced in the eight days after the Games started, involving athletes from Spain, Vietnam and the Democratic People's Republic of Korea, officials said.

(China Daily August 18, 2008)