STUTTGART, Germany (AFP) - Professional cycling teams have agreed to cover the significant cost of random doping controls as the sport continues to look for effective solutions to weeding out drugs cheats.
The Tour de France was hit with several doping scandals in 2007, a year in which the ongoing 'Operation Puerto' doping affair in Spain dominated the headlines for the troubled sport.
The latest anti-doping initiative is the brainchild of the IPCT (International Professional Cycling Teams) association.
It has been inspired by the internal anti-doping programme of Danish outfit CSC, and will be managed by the sport's International Cycling Union (UCI), which said the number of random tests will increase by 75 percent.
All results from the random tests will be sent to the World Anti Doping Agency (WADA), in line with the model being run by CSC - one of the few teams in the sport to carry out random tests on its own riders, going as far as to publish the results online.
The UCI added that all cyclists belonging to professional teams will be obliged to provide accurate information on their whereabouts.
"The total number of riders obliged to agree to this measure will increase to 800," said the UCI.
The UCI has come under increasing pressure to rid the sport of drugs cheats, and to reinforce its testing procedures in the wake of the Michael Rasmussen affair which dragged on during the Tour de France.
The Dane, wearing the fabled race leader's yellow jersey, was forced out of the race and then sacked by his Rabobank team after it controversially emerged that he had been warned by three separate bodies for missing random doping tests.
Missing three random controls usually equates to a positive test.
The UCI said Tuesday it now intends to take a more "forensic" approach to testing, in collaboration with the IOC-accredited laboratory in Lausanne and the University of Copenhagen.
The UCI has also performed a clear-out of its anti-doping commission, which is now headed by South African George Ruijsch van Dugteren.
