A- And B-Samples explained

When an athlete is told to be tested for doping he or she must follow a strict procedure. One of the procedures is to provide enough urine. After the athlete has provided the needed urine (90 ml) he or she must pour this into two Sample Collection Kits (SCK) - that the athlete has decided to use. This so that not the sample collector, the organization administering the samples or any other can know if this container is connected to the athlete. The athlete then pours 30ml into the SCK marked as the B-sample. The rest is poured into the SCK marked as the A-sample. The reason why you must provide more urine for the A-sample is because the people analyzing the sample does not know what to look for, so they need more urine. If they are to confirm the findings in the A-sample with the B-sample, they already know what to look for. Why the need for a B-sample, and is it more important than the A-sample? No. the B-sample is only collected to confirm the findings in the first analysis. In some cases the analysis of the B-sample does not confirm the findings in the A-sample, and so the athlete has not violated any Anti-Doping rules and is free to compete again (if the athlete was provisionally suspended that is). WADA Director General David Howman have said this about the reason for collecting the B-sample: - The B-sample helps confirm that an anti-doping rule violation has occurred and protects the rights of the athletes. It should be stressed that anti-doping is one of the few types of controls in society in which a confirmation procedure is used in order to protect individuals, and the very rare cases in which the analysis of the B-sample did not match the results of the A-sample have shown the usefulness of such procedure. Links to pages that shows or explains sample collections: http://library.wada-ama.org/results.php#/item/000000011021636/view/137 http://www.keeprugbyclean.com/en/resources/5/procedures/ http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/01/19/us-olympics-doping-idUSTRE80I1Z520120119