--- title: Policing the Olympic Athletes: Inside A Drug Test Lab | TIME description: A high-tech lab north of London will be randomly testing Olympic and Paralympic athletes to deter doping canonical: https://time.com/video/PLh4cpRS/ og:title: Policing the Olympic Athletes: Inside A Drug Test Lab og:description: A high-tech lab north of London will be randomly testing Olympic and Paralympic athletes to deter doping og:url: https://time.com/video/PLh4cpRS/ og:image: https://cdn.jwplayer.com/v2/media/PLh4cpRS/poster.jpg?width=720 og:type: video.other twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: Policing the Olympic Athletes: Inside A Drug Test Lab twitter:description: A high-tech lab north of London will be randomly testing Olympic and Paralympic athletes to deter doping twitter:image: https://cdn.jwplayer.com/v2/media/PLh4cpRS/poster.jpg?width=720 --- # Policing the Olympic Athletes: Inside A Drug Test Lab > Sponsored content. Supplied in partnership with TIME. 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They are at time.com/newsletters and are separate from a paid subscription. ## Video: Policing the Olympic Athletes: Inside A Drug Test Lab [Watch (HLS stream): Policing the Olympic Athletes: Inside A Drug Test Lab](https://cdn.jwplayer.com/manifests/PLh4cpRS.m3u8) (2:01)  _Published 2012-03-06. A high-tech lab north of London will be randomly testing Olympic and Paralympic athletes to deter doping_ --- Jul 27, 2023 3:22 PM UTC --- ## More From This Series [All Videos](https://time.com/video/) [President Trump Hosted American Athletes from the 2018 Winter Olympics and Paralympics](/video/mSoFGnuU/) ### President Trump Hosted American Athletes from the 2018 Winter Olympics and Paralympics [Inside the Hospital Ready to Treat Injured Olympic Athletes](/video/nlryz9Ww/) ### Inside the Hospital Ready to Treat Injured Olympic Athletes [31 Athletes Test Positive for Doping](/video/Bpx1UxbZ/) ### 31 Athletes Test Positive for Doping --- ## Transcript They're calling it the most high tech anti- doping lab in Olympic history. Thousands of urine samples with pass through this facility north of London during the Olympic and Paralymic games. Medal winner and half of all competitors, chosen at random will be tested for illegal substances. I do believe that it's a very strong deterrent effect. Where the athletes know there's going to be good testing, they won't take drugs. That is, the deterrent effect is very effective. That will enable atheletes to compete fairly in London. Olympic organizers take a hard line on doping. A positive result would see medals canceled, and a lengthy ban from competition. And that's not all. The lab will store samples for possible future retesting. What's also happening at this lab, is all the tests are being kept for eight years. So all the results. So should a new test come out in the future, which finds a way of detecting something that hasn't previously been detecteble We can go back eight years from now and still call the athletes up into account. In spite of advances in detection, drug use remains a constant factor in modern sport. Two- time Tour de France winner Alberto Contador, perhaps the most high profile athlete to be hit recently with a ban for doping. Ruling him out of this summer's games. For British Olympic hopeful high jumper Samson Oni, it's all about winning clean. Although he is prepared in the case of banned competitors to forgive and forget. I used to say that, you know, if you've been caught, then I think you should be banned, because, I didn't, I'm a clean athlete, and I want to compete with other clean athletes, and if I don't compete with other clean athletes, it's my hard work going down the drain. But at the same time I also understand what other people are saying which is if you've done your time then you can come back in. 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