It is like a scene from a dream. Familiar figures – Hugh Robertson, Minister for Sport and the Olympics, Paul Deighton, London 2012's chief executive, are drifting about in white coats and safety glasses in a long succession of brightly lit laboratory rooms.

Through my own somewhat blurry safety glasses – I am, admittedly, deprived temporarily of my own glasses – I can make out a good deal of staged activity by the two men for the benefit of the white-coated TV cameramen who circumnavigate them.

We are in a space that will be vital to the effective running of the London 2012 Games – the newly unveiled, labyrinthine facility at GlaxoSmithKline in Harlow which will process up to 400 doping samples a day in the course of the Olympics and Paralympics.


Guiding our little group around the lab is Christiaan Bartlett, one of the senior scientists from the Drug Testing Centre at King's College, London who will be engaged in testing the tidal wave of urine that will make its way from the capital to Essex during the latest celebration of the modern Games.

Here is the very counter across which dark blue padded boxes containing either urine samples or refrigerated – but NOT frozen – blood samples will be passed from couriers, signed for and assigned a code number.

Here are what look like seven large boxes, each capable of testing for 200 banned substances or metabolites within a period of 10 minutes through what I like to call liquid chromatography mass spectrometry, and each costing quarter of a million pounds.

Just in case you were worrying, there are enough so that even if some break down, the process, the tide of urine, will still flow.  And just in case you were still worrying, yes, of course they have spare parts. And, just in case those most worrisome among you were still not totally at ease, yes there will be engineers present on 24/7 call. As to whether those engineers will be checked for faults such as mental instability or indigestion, however, I do not yet have information.

Still, quite a secure process. "We've tried to cover every base," says Bartlett.

"What about if there was a massive power cut?" asks one of my companions; brightly. Base covered. The lab has its own independent generator. But our questioner is not to be put off. "What if all the machines broke down, for whatever reason? Could you carry out the process using more basic methods?"


For a moment we entertain visions of Bunsen burners and school chemistry lessons. 400 tests a day? Surely not.

The scientist with particular responsibility for this section of the lab shakes his head. Beaten.

Still, let's not be gloomy. Let's assume that the mysterious "whatever reason" never occurs. It looks like a pretty well-organised operation.

"Let's show you how we crack open a bottle," our guide says. Given that the Games are still six months away, and indeed given that the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) is still in the process of confirming that this lab will be capable of handling everything asked of it during the Games, such celebrations seem oddly premature.

I need not have worried, as it happens. Bartlett is talking about urine bottles, which will arrive having been sealed in the presence of the donors themselves – I am usually very efficient at untwisting the tops off old brown sauce bottles and such like, but I can personally report these sample bottles do not yield to even the most ferocious pressure.

No. What's needed is for them to be stuck in a machine which cracks the plastic seal around the top of the bottle, allowing it to be unscrewed. I don't catch the name of this particular bit of hardware being temporarily supplied by GSK, but I imagine it is something like Bottle Opener.

A little earlier, we have all just heard the overall figures at the introductory press conference. This vast laboratory – someone has worked out it is the size of seven tennis courts, which is a good stat, but not what I call a great one as that has to involve London buses – is going to be testing more than 6,000 samples in the course of the Games, more than at any earlier Games, a figure which the people at King's College normally take a year to get through.

"It's not all about the numbers, though," Bartlett confides. "A few years back we were testing more than 8,000 samples a year, but since times have got hard the role of intelligence, and target testing, has come to the forefront. So there may be special attention for some groups of athletes, or for athletes who have recently come back from injury. Intelligence is a key factor."

We have moved on by now past the seven standing quarter-of-a-million machines. There are only four in this section, which will be where suspect samples are more closely inspected.

Here, in this very room, perhaps in the very mass spectrometer we are standing alongside, which from this angle looks like something capable of microwaving a cow, the career and life of an Olympic athlete may be determined.

What, you wonder, can possibly go wrong – other than the arrival of "whatever reason", of course.

Well, on the same day as the Olympic big-wigs are lauding this multi-million pound set-up just across the way from Harlow Town FC, the WADA-accredited lab in Rio de Janeiro is, calamitously, losing some of its accredited status after being found to have falsely accused a Brazilian beach volleyball player, Pedro Solberg, of testing positive for testosterone.


Before entering the dazzling labyrinth I have spoken to Kelly Sotherton (pictured right), the Olympic heptathlon bronze medallist of 2004 who is seeking to challenge for a place in London 2012 without the benefit of World Class Lottery funding.

"Athletes need to take supplements because of the amount of work they do, but you have to be so, so careful about what is in anything you take because there have been so many cases of contamination," she says.

"The other day I was about to buy some organic tomatoes, but then I thought 'could they have put something into it I don't know about?' Even if I just ate air, I would still worry.

"And as an athlete, you always worry about whether your test is going to be done properly," she says. "If you don't, there's something wrong with you."

Intelligence is welcome in this field of operation. But, for the sake of this athlete, and every other, certitude is vital.

Mike Rowbottom, one of Britain's most talented sportswriters, has covered the past five Summer and four Winter Olympics for The Independent. Previously he has worked for the Daily Mail, The Times, The Observer, the Sunday Correspondent and The Guardian. He is now chief feature writer for insidethegames. Rowbottom's Twitter feed can be accessed here.