Steroids

LONDON -- A record 6,250 doping tests will be carried out at the London 2012 Olympics and Paralympics, organizers said on Thursday at the unveiling of the Games' anti-doping laboratory.

The lab in Harlow, Essex, will see around 150 scientists examine the samples from the athletes, with the shortest turnover given at 24 hours. The whole anti-doping process will involve around 1,000 people, the organizing committee LOCOG said.

MILWAUKEE -- Before Saturday night, when ESPN released a report claiming Ryan Braun tested positive for a performance-enhancing drug in October, no Milwaukee Brewers player had been accused publicly of such a transgression.

Though it might be a new experience for Brewers fans with regard to one of their own, Braun isn't the first star to face scrutiny for running afoul of Major League Baseball's Joint Drug Prevention and Treatment Program, which was rolled out after the 2003 season.

If the initial returns in from Congress are any sign, NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell and union chief DeMaurice Smith scored a big hit by agreeing to blood tests for human growth hormone.

That's important because one of the reasons both pushed for HGH testing was to get politicians in the nation's capital off their backs. They seem to have succeeded, with influential California Democrat Henry Waxman quickly weighing in to congratulate all parties involved with a "welcome breakthrough in the campaign to rid sports of the scourge of doping."

WASHINGTON -- One minute Roger Clemens was on trial for his freedom. Then, on just the second day of testimony, it was suddenly all over and the former baseball star was outside signing autographs for fans.

Almost as soon as it began, Clemens' perjury trial ended Thursday -- in a mistrial the judge blamed on prosecutors and said a "first-year law student" would have known to avoid.

U.S. District Judge Reggie Walton left the question of a new trial up in the air. But he called a halt to the trial under way after prosecutors showed jurors evidence that he had ruled out -- videotaped revelations that a teammate had said he'd told his wife Clemens confessed to using a drug.

PHILADELPHIA -- During his 24-year professional boxing career, Bernard "The Executioner" Hopkins has been awarded championship belts by the IBF, WBA, WBC, WBO, IBO and The Ring magazine.

But one alphabet designation no one had ever attempted to confer upon Hopkins, at least not until Monday, is that of beneficiary of PEDs.

As in performance-enhancing drugs.

PARIS -- The indignities and intrusions athletes accept as a price of competing at the highest levels of sport are considerable. From dawn to an hour before midnight, they must be prepared to open their doors to drug testers. They must urinate in front of the sample collectors. Because they often take blood samples, too, the testers are sometimes nicknamed "vampires" by athletes who hold out their arms for the needles.