Amid a wealth of new designer drugs and ways to elude testing, International Olympic Committee (IOC) officials acknowledge that they may never be able to guarantee an Olympics free of doping scandals, the Boston Globe reported Aug. 11.

Officials hope that a planned 4,500 drug tests conducted at the Summer Games in Beijing this month -- 1,000 more than were completed in Athens four years ago -- will have a deterrent effect on use of banned substances and other forms of cheating. A Spanish cyclist on Aug. 11 became the first athlete testing positive for a banned substance during the Games, and a number of high-profile athletes were barred from competition before the start of the Olympics because of drug test results.

IOC president Jacques Rogge said he is disappointed that doping is still occurring but believes people have to be realistic about the possibility that it could ever be completely eradicated. "Doping is to sport what criminality is to society and there will always be criminality in society," Rogge said.

Under more widespread testing measured being conducted in Beijing, the top five finishers in each event and two randomly selected entrants will be tested for synthetic EPO, an endurance-boosting hormone. In addition, widespread testing for human growth hormone (HGH) is occurring for the first time at this year's Olympics, and samples will be kept for eight years so that retests can occur after better detection methods are made available.

Because officials have acknowledged they cannot eliminate all drug-related cheating, some elite athletes have turned to submitting voluntarily to a number of sophisticated blood and urine tests in order to demonstrate that they are clean. High-profile U.S. athletes who agreed to participate in a program sponsored by the U.S. Anti-Doping agency include swimmers Michael Phelps and Dara Torres and sprinter Tyson Gay.