KEY POINTS:
A selection of New Zealand's elite athletes will need a greater grasp of time management next year when a controversial new process governing drug testing comes into force.
The World Anti-Doping Agency (Wada) has asked its New Zealand affiliate, Drug Free Sport NZ, to ensure sportspeople included in their registration pool for testing can be found at a precise time of day, 365 days of the year.
The measure is intended to guarantee athletes realise the threat of random testing is ever-present, though Drug Free Sport NZ's chief executive Graeme Steel doubts its effectiveness.
He also described the initiative as a logistical nightmare and one likely to jeopardise his organisation's relationship with sportspeople.
Under the Wada protocol, athletes will be required to provide a one- hour window where they are guaranteed to be at a designated place each day of the year.
New Zealand's Beijing-bound Olympic team will experience a watered down version of the restriction from Sunday, the date all team members must notify their whereabouts to the International Olympic Committee (IOC) for the duration of the Games, which start in Beijing on August 8.
"It's going to be a challenge for them and us, and a challenge to our relationship with the athletes," Steel said of next year's policy.
He had lobbied successfully to limit the size of New Zealand's registration pool.
It currently has about 1800 athletes but under Wada's original plan any athlete qualified to compete at a national championships must be included.
"You imagine archery," Steel asked, when explaining what he considered to be Wada's flawed logic.
"If you're a club member you'll probably qualify to go to the national champs. We'd have every archer in New Zealand giving us daily whereabouts stuff. Imagine that."
Although happy to have had Wada's powers curbed, Steel said he was unconvinced the time check would be effective.
"We'll suck this one and see, the jury is out. It's trying to solve the doping issue through paperwork, but at least much more manageable now that it used to be."
Steel said another challenge was determining how team sports like rugby would be handled.
"We don't want hundreds of rugby players on it. We know where they are for 10 months of the year four nights a week and one night at the weekend," he said, adding that individual sports like triathlon, cycling and athletics were more worthy of inclusion.
"They can train anywhere around the world, they have their own programmes, they're the ones we have to be most vigilant over," he said.
Under the system, athletes would be given some latitude but missing three random tests in an 18-month period would likely result in a ban.
Meanwhile, most if not all of the New Zealand team headed for China have been tested, with priority athletes like Valerie Vili on more than occasion.
The IOC expects to conduct about 4500 tests in Beijing, an increase of the 3667 carried out four years ago at the Games in Athens.
Wada analysed 223,898 samples last year; 4402 or 1.97 per cent delivered an "adverse" finding.
Drugs-tainted athletics and cycling accounted for the majority of the tests along with aquatics and soccer.
Notably, only 24 of those samples revealed traces of human growth hormone erythropoietin (EPO), indicating athletes were either heeding warnings or injecting in "micro doses" rather than risking a higher level in one hit before competition.
- NZPA
