How Laboratories Lose And Regain Accreditation

Only accredited laboratories may produce anti-doping results, and accreditation can be suspended or withdrawn. That possibility is what makes a laboratory's output evidence rather than opinion.

Accreditation covers competence and independence

Requirements combine general laboratory standards with sport-specific technical documents governing methods, reporting thresholds and confirmation procedures.

Independence is assessed alongside technical competence, since a laboratory subject to influence from a national federation or government cannot produce reliable findings.

Assessment includes site inspection, documentation review and examination of how the facility handles results that would be inconvenient to the people around it.

Accreditation is granted for a period and reassessed rather than held permanently, so a laboratory that met the standard once must continue to demonstrate it under changing methods.

Proficiency testing is continuous rather than periodic

Laboratories receive blind samples containing known substances at known concentrations and must report them correctly.

Both false negatives and false positives are failures, and repeated errors trigger escalating consequences up to suspension.

Because the samples are indistinguishable from routine work, proficiency testing measures the process as it actually operates rather than as it is described.

Suspension has immediate consequences for a testing programme

A suspended laboratory cannot analyse samples, so collections must be redirected to other facilities, often in other countries and at greater cost.

Testing volumes in the affected territory usually fall during the suspension, which is why the sanction is used carefully rather than reflexively.

Results already issued are reviewed, and cases relying on them may need reconsideration depending on the nature of the failure.

Athletes with pending cases are affected directly, since a challenge to the analysing facility's status becomes available to them while the suspension stands.

Reinstatement requires demonstrated correction

A suspended laboratory must identify the cause, implement corrective action and pass a further assessment before analysis can resume.

Where the failure concerned independence rather than technique, reinstatement typically requires governance changes such as new reporting lines or new leadership.

Provisional reinstatement with restricted scope is sometimes used, allowing certain analyses while the remaining issues are resolved.

Accreditation supports the legal weight of a result

Rules provide that an accredited laboratory is presumed to have conducted analysis in accordance with the standards, which places the burden on an athlete to show otherwise.

That presumption is only defensible because accreditation is externally audited and can be lost, and it is the reason athletes' challenges focus on documented procedural departures.

The system therefore depends on the credibility of the accrediting body itself, which is why its independence attracts as much scrutiny as any individual laboratory.