ZURICH: FIFA plans to freeze blood and urine samples of star players at this summer’s World Cup finals in a new anti-doping protocol.

Chief medical officer professor Jiri Dvorak outlined the plans on a FIFA podcast, as he vowed to roll out a more sophisticated drug-testing programme for the world game that will kick into gear in Brazil this summer.

“The fight against doping has intensified over the last 10 to 15 years,” he said. “The increase of simple sampling procedures both in and out of competition controls does not stop some athletes to continue with doping strategies.

“It has been mentioned that the athletes, or their supporting personnel, are a step ahead of the science. So we discussed whether this is true and whether the current strategy is the right one.

“This strategy was developed in the late 1960s, meanwhile the world of sport has changed. There is strong evidence that if you re-analyse the samples from past years that new methods would find them, this is an extremely deterrent method.

“Most of the international federations decided to freeze the samples for a number of years. FIFA will do that from the 2014 World Cup. We will freeze them and keep them as long as we want and we can always revisit the samples.”

#########