Vice President Xi Jinping (second right) tours Beas River Sunday, the venue for the Olympic equestrian cross-country event in August. GIS

The Hong Kong Jockey Club announced yesterday that its Racing Laboratory, the Olympic equine drug testing facility, will be offering free voluntary testing for the some 300 Olympic and Paralympic horses that will be competing in the upcoming equestrian events in August.

Head of Racing Laboratory Terence Wan See-ming said as requested by the International Equestrian Federation (IEF), they will be giving a one-off elective testing for Olympic horses after they arrive in Hong Kong.

"We will take urine samples from the horses within 12 hours of their arrival at the equestrian venue in Sha Tin," he said.

Test results will be out in three to five days.

The free test will cover 66 legitimate medications but not doping agents, he said.

"We will keep the test results confidential until the equestrian events have completed. Not even the IEF will know about the test results during the competition," he said.

In most cases of positive samples, they are due to inappropriate use of medications, he noted.

In equestrian competitions, he said neither legitimate medications nor doping agents are allowed in horses.

"The elective testing can find out if there are any residues of legitimate medications in the horses before the competition," he said.

"We expect it to be popular because it's like a free health check for the horses," Wan said.

If the test comes back positive, the team can choose to have a paid medication test close to the day of the competition, he said.

Apart from the free test, the Racing Laboratory will also perform post-competition testing for at least 50 horses, including 18 medal horses, he said.

Compared to the Athens Olympic in 2004, he said the testing time will be greatly reduced.

Negative results will come out within seven days while positive ones will take 12, he said.

Located close to the competition venue, he said the Racing Laboratory is the first-ever on-site testing facility for Olympic equine samples.

It will only take a few minutes to go from the competition venue to the Racing Laboratory and this will lower the chance of the samples turning bad, he said.

The 38-year-old Racing Laboratory was the first in Asia to be appointed by the IEF as a reference laboratory in 2001 to conduct testing for international equestrian events held in Asia.

The laboratory has 25 mass spectrometers worth US$8 million for drug identification.

The laboratory's racing chemist Emmie Ho Ngai-man likened her job to that of a crime investigator.

"We have to find out what makes a sample positive," she said.

She recalled that in 2002, they found some medication residues that were left on a horse after its groom forgot to wash his hands before putting on his gear.

Vice President Xi Jinping addresses members of the Executive Council, Legislative Council, Judiciary and principal officials. GIS

(HK Edition 07/08/2008 page1)