the AIS team that came up with the EPO

blood test, was showered with praise

after the International Olympic

Committee accepted, in August 2000, a

submission on the test to catch blood-

doping cheats at the Sydney Games.

John Boultbee, then director of the

AIS, wrote to him on August 8, 2000,

congratulating and thanking him for

his ''great work on the EPO'' project -

saving the Sydney Games from the

potentially huge embarrassment of

having dopers dominate in events such

as distance running and cycling, simply

because there was no foolproof test.

Boultbee said, ''You have done the

AIS sports science proud and the AIS as

a whole. More importantly, you have

done a great thing for world sport.''

Sadly, Boultbee's term ended in

March 2001 and a mere two months

later the research work ended.

With other AIS scientists, Parisotto

received a letter also from then Sports

Minister Jackie Kelly, telling him that

for work in sports science and

particularly in developing the EPO test

they had been awarded the Australian

Sports Medal.

After the Sydney Games, Parisotto

and his Canberra team had moved

swiftly to form an international

consortium of major international

pharmaceutical companies, sports

scientists and intellectuals based at

such seats of learning as Harvard and

McGill University, and drug-testing

laboratories in Beijing and Paris to

continue the fight against blood cheats.

This was established with the

blessing of the then newly formed

World Anti-Doping Agency.

The team wanted to ensure that

while it worked in a complex alongside

elite-level athletes at the AIS at Bruce,

it could not be accused of aiding

athletes to avoid being caught. The

broader the consortium, the less likely

that the AIS team's work would be seen

as completely ''in-house''.

However, within nine months of the

Sydney Olympics, the Australian

Government pulled the rug from

underneath them - and to this day,

says Parisotto, they do not know why:

''The Government never clarified why,

and rumours of professional jealousy

only further underlined the ... short-

sighted decision to ban the AIS

scientists. The AIS had got most of the

recognition; but I make no apology for

the fact that it was AIS scientists who

came up with the idea behind the EPO

test.''

The Government then redirected all

funds that had gone into AIS blood-

doping research to the Australian

Sports Drug Testing Laboratory in

Sydney. Because of the resulting lack of

competition, the AIS's work up to May

2001 has not been furthered other than

AIS scientists' completing and

publishing all the EPO studies.

In his book, Parisotto writes,

''Despite the outstanding success of the

EPO research and the test used during

the Sydney Games ... a sign had

emerged that something was amiss

when the Government directed that any

future anti-doping research performed

by the AIS had to be in collaboration

with the ASDTL.

''The ASDTL had received a massive

injection of government funding ahead

of the Sydney Olympics, where it was

the IOC-accredited laboratory that

tested the samples collected from all

Olympic athletes; but for whatever

reason they refused to be involved with

the AIS consortium and our proposal to

the World Anti-Doping Agency for

funding for the project went ahead -

without them.

''We had been forced by ASDTL to

defy the government demand but

considered the need to get the alliance

in place so important - as did WADA

- [that] we went ahead regardless.

''That's when politics, and the quest

for the glory that could go with such a

coup, got dirty; and the AIS and our

team of researchers was the target. An

Australian Government representative

on the WADA board raised his concerns

at a WADA meeting in Cape Town that

AIS scientists involved in the

development of the EPO test were too

closely associated with sportsmen and

women.

''It was, the WADA rep said, a 'con-

flict of interest'. They wanted us out

and we were caught totally off-guard.

''AIS scientists were banned from

performing anti-doping research, the

directive coming out of the blue from

Jackie Kelly's office. No consultation,

no warning. Surely a sign that this was

no policy shift. We had never heard of

or seen any policy regarding who could

or should be involved in anti-doping

research and there was never any

mutterings before the Sydney Games.

''It was gutting. How could the very

people who supported our group so

emphatically leading up to the Sydney

Games now be putting the knife in? Our

attempts to get an audience with the

minister were continually ignored.

Frustration was boiling over.

''It was, revealed later, however, that

the Australian Government's directive

[had been] delivered some two weeks

before a WADA executive meeting in

Cape Town to confirm and approve the

recipients of research funds. The

attempt to make it appear that it was

the WADA who was responsible for the

directive was exposed as a sham. What

was the motive behind the deception by

government bureaucrats?

''Why would the Government

basically shoot itself in the foot? They

would have been recognised again as

leading the charge against doping

internationally instead of becoming a

research backwater as was the case

before the EPO test came along. Why

did they not want this? If there was a

'bigger picture' no one was telling us.

''The Government's actions had to be

interpreted as a major embarrassment,

given they had made such political

mileage about their fight against sports

drugs in the lead-up to the Sydney

Games. The Australian Government

would have to justify to the

international sporting community why

it chose to ban scientists with a proven

ability to conceive and develop anti-

doping strategies from taking part in

future anti-doping work; but this was

never made public. Having been at the

forefront of the fight against illegal

sports drugs, the AIS sports scientists

quietly faded into the background and

anti-blood-doping research was to

come to a ... halt. Who was going to

fight for the clean athletes now?''

Parisotto says, ''The ban meant that

sporting federations world-wide would

again lag behind cheating athletes. The

status quo would be maintained and

the established anti-doping community

would remain intact after the breach by

AIS sports scientists. Nothing was to

change and blood doping would remain

entrenched; [it] even blossomed in the

years following the Sydney Games.

''Scandals such as the Giro di Italia

cycle race and the Salt Lake City Winter

Olympics, [with] the Finnish cross-

country skiers, confirmed athletes

were still blood-boosting and, indeed,

had moved on to new methods of blood

doping. Unaware of the Australian

Government's directive some four

weeks earlier, WADA ... granted our

research team $710,000. They had not

indicated any problem with our consor-

tium and implored us to urgently begin

research to detect new forms of blood

doping, including blood substitutes and

synthetic haemoglobins in time for the

Salt Lake Winter Olympics.

''It is difficult to reconcile that WADA

would on the one hand ban us from

performing research but then on the

other grant our team the research

funds.

''Perhaps out of embarrassment the

Australian Government remained firm

and refused to back away from their

ban on our involvement. Even the

urgent request from WADA was not

enough to sway the Government. The

hope of a new era was dashed.

''The breakthrough initiative was

forced offshore and its momentum

blunted. It was outrageous that

Australian bureaucrats were

potentially responsible for betraying

the clean athletes of the world and

petty jealousies and egos had stifled

ours and WADA's plans.''

For Parisotto, the news of the

Government's decision came as a

double whammy. He had been due to

fly to France for a conference but

collapsed at Sydney airport and ended

up in hospital. On his return to

Canberra a few days later, and

checking his home e-mails, he learned

of the ban late on a Friday afternoon.

The ban brought to an end his and

the AIS's pioneering work.

The path to a successful EPO test had

begun with a meeting between AIS

scientists and various sporting officials

in Canberra in August 1997. Parisotto

and his team were given the green light

for a full-blown research program. It

provided new impetus for AIS sports

scientists after drug-testing work had

been shut down in the wake of the Alex

Watson inquiry in 1990. Watson was

the modern pentathlete barred from

the 1988 Seoul Olympics for alleged

excessive caffeine use.

The initial stimulus in the search for

an EPO test came after Parisotto and

his colleagues found in a series of

experiments that high-altitude

exposure failed to stimulate red blood

production, which EPO use had been

proved to do. The hardest part was

finding guinea pigs for tests -

volunteers were sought in

advertisements in The Canberra Times.

Funding of $250,000 made the

program, to that time, the most

expensive ever undertaken by AIS

sports scientists. In December 1999,

with 10 months to go to the Sydney

Games and the spectre of blood

cheating hanging menacingly over

them, the IOC and Australian

Government went half-shares in

upping the ante to $3.2million. The IOC

had diverted funds to the Canberra

research from a British program to find

a test for human growth hormone use.

Six weeks out from the Sydney Games,

Parisotto and his team came up with

the goods.

Still enjoying its triumph, the AIS

team learned in May 2001 that it could

not conduct further trials of tests for

banned substances or make public

issues involving blood doping. It was

limited to being ''intellectual

collaborator'', a role that would be

considered case by case by an anti-

doping research panel. Despite the ban,

the AIS team was ordered to complete

the publication of all EPO reports.

Thus effectively ended Parisotto's

crusade against ''the drug culture

which has pervaded sport''. For much

of the past 2 years he has been in a

mere support role in other research

areas.

Now, he's decided, he wants to ''get

on with my life. I got sick of the to-ing

and fro-ing. I've wasted a lot of

negative energy''.

In the past six months, there had

been rumours the AIS was ''back in the

good books with sporting authorities''

but it continues to be nothing but

hearsay. Parisotto chose not to hang on

any longer in the hope that things might

change, that the AIS would be

reconsidered for a resurrection of its

pioneering research, and he resigned

three weeks ago. Not only did the

Australian Government allow the ball

to be dropped, as it were, but a huge

amount of ground has been lost.

''The opportunity to advance to a

whole new level has gone, to the

detriment of sport world-wide, not just

in Australia. The shame of it is that

Australia was a backwater in

credibility and recognition until the

EPO test was developed.''

Parisotto considers blood doping a

far more serious problem for sport than

steroid use, given the numbers of

athletes - about 30 - whose deaths in

the past 15-20 years have been linked

to the abuse of EPO.

''And what of the next generation of

doping agents? Genetic doping will be

able to permanently alter biology and

physiology. Who will fight this

increasingly unwinnable war on drugs

in sport?''

Griffith-born Parisotto, a man with

an extensive background in pathology,

will now look at private ventures in the

medical industry. His may well be a loss

Australian and world sport will sorely

feel.