In its bid to reduce doping to its barest minimum, the world soccer body, FIFA, says it has conducted 40,000 tests on players so far this year through its affiliates, national associations and confederations.
Prof. Jiri Dvorak, the FIFA Chief Medical Officer, said at the world soccer body's daily press briefing in Johannesburg on Sunday, that its out-of-competition and in-competition testing programmes were designed based on statistics and risk assessment of doping in football.
Dvorak, who admitted that positive doping cases in football was comparably low compared to other elite sports, said that FIFA was continuing its stringent fight against doping.
He said that FIFA, in conjunction with the World Anti-doping Agency (WADA), launched the ``Say no to doping'' at the ongoing World Cup in South Africa. Dvorak said FIFA had spent about $40 million on the testing exercise at $41,000 per test.
FIFA Medical Commission also said that no positive results have been recorded so far on the 32 teams competing in the 2010 World Cup. 18 teams were tested in their camps in Europe, while 14 were tested in South Africa , adding that random tests would be conducted on two players per team after every game in South Africa , to bring the total to 256.
According to the commission, only four positive tests were returned between 1994 and 2009 in 6,964 controls in 57 final rounds in FIFA competitions including Olympic tournaments.
It said that FIFA medical officers were expected to submit medical reports on injuries and diseases daily to the FIFA Medical Research Commission (F-MARC). The commission also observed that medicine in general, and in particular sports and emergency medicine were of the highest standard in South Africa
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