A new book highlights the symbiosis of cycling and doping and the seriousness of the connection.

FIVB top official accused of violating ethical rules by manipulating doping sanction and cheating with player’s ages.

Texas Senate approves the largest programme of random steroid tests for athletes in Texan high schools. WADA applauds the efforts. Meanwhile schools in Australia protest against drug testing of non-elite Australian children.

20 years ago the German heptathlete Birgit Dressel died from drug poisoning. She did not die because of the lack of medical expertise – she died because of the excess of it. Has sport learned from this?

A new doping study by anti-doping expert Sandro Donati estimates that 31 million people are involved in doping worldwide. The trafficking of performance-enhancing drugs poses a danger to society not only because of its links to organised crime but also because the cost of treating doping addicts is exploding.

In Finland drugs for sports doping are increasingly arriving by couriers rather than by mail or air freight. Last year customs officers at the Helsinki-Vantaa Airport uncovered 72 cases of doping substance crimes, and in some cases the smugglers had more than 10,000 hormone ampules or tablets in their checked luggage.

Athletes in former communist Czechoslovakia were subjected to a secret state-controlled doping programme with grave consequences for their health. In contrast to the situation in the former East Germany, however, the Czechoslovakian programme has not been described in any detail yet but a report is expected in 2007.

High level support is pouring in to Mark Fainaru-Wada and Lance Williams, the two American sports journalists who are facing jail for up to 18 months because they refuse to say who leaked them confidential grand jury testimonies from athletes questioned in the Balco doping case.