Cycling: 'Blood profiles' planned to defeat drug cheats

Officials embarked yesterday on a new effort to clean up drugs in the sport, pushing ahead with plans to create medical profiles of riders to deter drug cheats.

With cycling's survival at stake, the World Anti-Doping Agency set aside a long-running war of words with the International Cycling Union and gave its support to the "biological passport" program that could be a model for other sports. WADA president Dick Pound, who has been sharply critical of the UCI's handling of the doping crisis, said it was time to reach "a new page" in the sport's future. The passport program, first announced by the UCI last week, would monitor a series of blood parameters of a rider to create the medical snapshot that could be compared to results of doping tests.