1090th General Monthly Meeting
Drugs and Other Measurements For the Olympics 2000
Dr Tony Collings,
CSIRO Division of Telecommunications and Industrial Physics
Ph: 9413 7148
email: Tony.Collings@tip.csiro.au
Date: Wednesday 2 August, 2000
Time: 6:00 for 6:30 pm
Venue: Coles Room, State Library of New South Wales, Macquarie Street, Sydney.
With a few weeks to the opening of the Sydney Olympiad, it is an appropriate time to be thinking about some of the measurement science that underpins international sports events. Most people immediately think of drug testing and this is a highly controversial subject. However, I will speak first of some of the measurements that we usually overlook and of my involvement in some of them. The recent study by Australian scientists at the Australian Institute of Sport and the Australian Sports Drug Testing Laboratory on the detection of EPO attracted public interest. EPO purportedly enhances endurance performance by increasing red blood cell levels in the blood and is the modern means of an older, and illegal, practice called blood doping. I will discuss the history of blood doping and the rationale behind its use.