ATHLETICS:With the introduction of mandatory blood testing at the World Championships in Daegu, the cheats should be running scared from now on, writes IAN O'RIORDAN

SO JUST seven days to go before the fastest, highest and strongest sporting contests of the year, and the tense and nervous excitement is difficult to contain. At least it is in our house, anyway.

Some of you may actually need reminding that starting next Saturday in Daegu – not to be confused with Diego, or indeed Diageo – will be 2,000 of the world’s fittest athletes, from 202 counties, over nine days of competition, in front of 500,000 spectators, an accumulative worldwide TV audience of eight billion, competing for some €5 million in prize money, world records, etc, etc.

It’s the 13th edition of the World Athletics Championships, and will positively dwarf any other sporting event on the planet this year.

Unfortunately for us, it’s all taking place in South Korea, on the other side of the planet – eight hours ahead of our watches – and happens to clash with a couple of big soccer matches, plus the countdown to the Rugby World Cup and the All-Ireland hurling final.

Pity, because it promises to be a fairly spectacular dress rehearsal for the London Olympics next summer – and there’ll be no containing the excitement when all that comes around.

In the meantime we can look forward to Channel 4’s new exclusive live coverage, starting next Saturday morning – at 01.00am, to be exact – and which will include every session live, for the full nine days, for more than 65 hours in all. Fantastic, although just as well: RTÉ won’t be there, and let’s just say they aren’t the only ones to opt out.

Truth is nearly everything about these World Championships is remotely low-key and perhaps not surprisingly so: if I told you the only world record Usain Bolt was going to break this year would be for the number of Facebook friends (5,071,885, and counting) would you still rush to tune in next Sunday afternoon – about 12.45pm, Irish time – to see him defend his 100 metres title?

Bolt actually turns 25 tomorrow, and although that’s still young in athletic terms, there are suddenly a few signs he may actually be over his peak, and thus slowing down.

Indeed there’s little to suggest Bolt will come near his 9.58 seconds world record he ran when winning the World Championship 100 metres in Berlin two years ago, and definitely not the 19.19 seconds he ran to win the 200 metres. It could be he’s saving his best again for London next year, although time will tell on that one.

In fact Bolt is only joint-sixth fastest over the 100 metres this summer, with his 9.88 seconds, not that he’s going to be too worried about that. Two of the men ahead of him – Tyson Gay (9.79) and Steve Mullings (9.80) – won’t be in Daegu, and a third is doubtful: Gay pulled up injured in the US trials and has since undergone surgery on his hip, while Mullings, who trains in Florida with Gay, found out yesterday that his B-sample, taken during last month’s Jamaican trials, had returned an Adverse Analytical Finding, said to be the diuretic Furosemide – better known in athletic circles as a potent masking agent for anabolic steroids.

Needless to say Mullings is maintaining his innocence – and reckons it must be something to do with his asthma medication – although it’s actually the second time he’s failed a drugs test: he tested positive for testosterone before the Athens Olympics, and was handed a two-year ban.

Then last Sunday word came through that the American Mike Rodgers, who has run 9.85 this summer and is selected to run both the 100 metres and relay in Daegu, tested positive for a banned stimulant, which he immediately blamed on an energy drink (he thought it was Red Bull – when apparently it wasn’t).

Rodgers could get off with just a warning, and yet athletics doesn’t do itself any favours whenever a drugs story like this comes out – even if it happens to be a genuine inadvertent use.

But there is still reason to believe. Some people tend to feel queasy when the talk turns to needles and blood, and if so stop reading now, because in athletics this is actually a good thing.

The IAAF, the guardians of the sport, have announced that every single athlete competing in Daegu will first undergo a blood test, in what is unquestionably the strictest anti-doping programme ever undertaken by any sporting body. Not even professional cyclists are subject to such wide-sweeping testing procedures, and I wonder what would happen if the Rugby World Cup people demanded the same?

Anyway, for the first time at any major championships, all athletes arriving in Daegu – and many have already – will collect their accreditation at the athletes’ village, then proceed to a purpose-built doping control station, where the stack of needles are at the ready, for the quick and painless prick of the finger. It’s the first time all participants will be tested under the same optimal conditions, within the same time period, in cooperation with the World Anti-Doping Agency, and the results should be interesting.

Effectively what the IAAF is looking to establish is the so-called “biological passport”, or the blood identity of each athlete, which would then be monitored for use of illegal substances. Suspicious results from the screening analyses can also trigger follow-up target tests, for further analyses, and all results can ultimately be used in support of an anti-doping rule violation, if an athlete’s overall biological profile is found to be consistent with the use of a prohibited substance or a prohibited method.

All this is on top of the standard, randomised doping tests. In other words, the athletes can run, but there’ll be nowhere to hide anymore if they are taking any dodgy. It may actually be the closest any sport can come to ensuring a level playing field.

One of the consequences of this is the sudden and at least partly mysterious “Daegu dropout rate” – which has become the theme of many popular athletics websites this week. Indeed there have already been a few high-profile withdrawals, and not just some of Ireland’s leading athletics reporters.

The danger, naturally, is trying to differentiate between the genuine withdrawals and the perhaps more suspicious ones.

Mbulaeni Mulaudzi from South Africa, the defending 800 metres champion, withdrew this week with a hamstring injury, and few people doubt that’s legit. Likewise, Kenya’s Wilson Kiprop is out of the 10,000 metres with an ankle injury, and Norway’s Christina Vukicevic, one of Derval O’Rourke’s rivals in the 100 metres hurdles, won’t be in Daegu either.

Thankfully, all 17 Irish athletes qualified for Daegu are fit and healthy and presumably ready to submit themselves to the needle – and it can only help their chances that the IAAF have once again got the cheats running scared.

The next seven days – as the excitement mounts – will tell a lot. It’s when athletes start citing fatigue, illness or an unspecified injury as the reason for their withdrawal – and a few already have – that the question has to be asked: are they really just afraid that the needle will prove the damage done to their blood cleanliness?

“Every athlete will be subject to a blood test in what is unquestionably the strictest anti-doping programme ever undertaken by any sporting body. Not even professional cyclists are subject to such wide-sweeping testing procedures