WADA suspends Doha anti-doping laboratory

Doha's anti-doping laboratory has had its accreditation suspended by WADA for four months after it failed to comply with international standards.

The decision to ban the laboratory in Qatar, host country of the October 2016 UCI Road World Championships, was a result of more stringent quality assessment procedures introduced by WADA to ensure laboratories maintain the highest standards.

The suspension, which took effect on November 7, prohibits the laboratory from carrying out any anti-doping activities including all analyses of urine and blood samples.

During the ban, samples must be sent to another WADA-accredited laboratory, "ensuring that athletes can have full confidence in continued high-quality sample analysis and the wider anti-doping system."

The Doha laboratory has 21 days to appeal the decision to the Court of Arbitration for Sport.

Doha is the latest to face the WADA crackdown on standards with Almaty (Kazakhstan), Lisbon (Portugal) Bloemfontein (South Africa) and Madrid (Spain) all suffering sanctions, while this month a Moscow lab had its accreditation revoked in the wake of allegations of state-sponsored doping in Russia.

It's not known if the lab was involved in testing samples from the UCI Road World Championships event.