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/Washington DC, USAs the athletes take centre stage at the Vancouver 2010 Winter Olympics and Paralympic Winter Games this month, chemists will be hard at work behind the scenes to catch athletes looking to win by taking drugs or blood products to artificially boost their performance during the competition.Doping is as old as the games - the ancient Greeks ate special diets and potions to enhance their athletic prowess - but over time, the practice has become considerably more sophisticated. Sports authorities began introducing drug testing in the 1970s and today, a variety of techniques exist in specialised anti-doping laboratories to catch...

VANCOUVER, British Columbia -- Apolo Anton Ohno glided around the ice Saturday night with a U.S. flag tucked under an arm, flashing a handful of fingers plus one.

IT'S a symbol of Australia's fighting spirit. Now the Boxing Kangaroo is at the centre of an international incident, with the International Olympic Committee ordering it taken down from the Winter Games athletes' village in Vancouver. It can be revealed that IOC officials ordered the green and gold flag be removed just 24 hours after it was draped over a balcony - because it was deemed to be "too commercial". But the Aussies are defying the IOC order and are determined to keep the flag flying. "Someone from the IOC is objecting because it's our team mascot," an Australian source...

The 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver is going to be a financial disaster that should serve as a wake up call to sports executives ...spending on sports sponsorships and advertising--is very bad. NBC... is going to lose about $200 million on Vancouver... Over the past five years the operational costs of the 2010 Winter Games has mushroomed from $1.3 billion to almost $2 billion. Vancouver is going to take it on the chin as declining sponsorship and tourism revenue ...