Report: WADA Says Brazil Cut Back on Drug Tests Ahead of Olympics

WADA, the world anti-doping regulator, is alarmed over a sharp drop in drug testing by the lab in charge of testing Brazilian athletes in the weeks before the Olympic Games began in Rio de Janeiro on August 5, according to a report in Brazilian newspaper O Estado de S. Paulo.

According to the report, only 93 Brazilian Olympians were tested between July 1 and July 24, a number that WADA considers “insufficient and unjustifiable.”

The Brazilian government, for its part, says that the drop-off in testing was due to WADA’s decision to suspend the only lab accredited for the tests on June 24 without providing for a substitute. (Some samples were sent to a Portuguese lab that was itself temporarily banned from testing by WADA.)

WADA told Estadão that it reported the drop in testing to the International Olympic Committee “immediately,” but that the Committee’s spokesman had nothing to say on the matter.