Saclay laboratory prepares for Paris Olympics

Dozens of specimens, color-coded and labeled, were lined up along the workbench in their shelves, awaiting processing. Sitting at her table, a technician prepared the urine mixture to inject into a mass spectrometer for analysis. Across the way, his colleague was filling out forms filled with barcodes. In the adjoining room, called the “robot room”, the extraction equipment emitted a persistent hum. This secret location on the Paris-Saclay University campus in Orsay (Essonne) houses the Anti-Doping Laboratory (French Anti-Doping Laboratory, LADF), which The world visited during a ministerial tour.

During the Olympic Games (July 26 to August 11), the LADF will be responsible for analyzing 6,000 blood and urine samples, and 2,000 during the Paralympic Games (August 28 to September 8). That’s the equivalent of four months of normal activity. It’s a remarkable feat for the site’s 40 employees, including about 20 technicians, who will be joined throughout the Games by about 60 colleagues from other laboratories accredited by the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA), the industry’s regulatory body.

“The Saclay laboratory is the flagship of the French anti-doping fight,” declared Amélie Oudéa-Castéra, the French Minister of Sports and the Olympic Games, and Sylvie Retailleau, her counterpart for Higher Education and Research, on June 20. However, it almost missed accreditation for the Games, an unimaginable blow for the host country and the laboratory that developed the erythropoietin (EPO) test in the early 2000s.

To maintain its position, France had to comply with the World Anti-Doping Code. As required by WADA, the laboratory was legally separate from the national doping control body, in this case the French Anti-Doping Agency (French Anti-Doping Agency, AFLD), by order of April 21, 2021.

Its main task was to show that it could handle the volume of samples required during the Games, as mandated by the two regulatory bodies: the International Testing Agency (ITA) – created in 2018 by the International Olympic Committee and responsible for the anti-doping programme during the Games – and the International Paralympic Committee, which is solely responsible for the Paralympic edition.

DNA fingerprint comparisons

But this was impossible in the cramped and dilapidated premises used until spring 2023 at the University of Paris. Center for Resources, Expertise and Sports Performance (Center for Resources, Expertise and Sports Performance) in Châtenay-Malabry (Hauts-de-Seine). Hence its move to Saclay, where, after several months of work, slightly delayed by Covid-19, the site has been operational since mid-May 2023. It cost nearly 13 million euros, financed by the State.

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