Tests taken from 24 Parma soccer players in July have revealed an abnormally high level of red blood cells. This latest revelation comes at a time when Italian sport is reeling from a series of alleged doping cover-ups and the sacking of Mario Pescante as president of the Italian Olympic committee.

The failed tests involve the entire Parma team, bar Fabio Cannavaro. They were unearthed by a police search ordered by Bologna's public prosecutor Giovanni Spinosa, who has been carrying out an investigation into the illegal use of drugs in sport for the last two years.

In two cases, players' red blood cells were at an alarmingly high level. Increased numbers of oxygen-carrying red blood cells can enhance performance. Products such as EPO are used to artificially increase their rate.

The normal level of red blood cells in the body is between 42 per cent and 52 per cent. Cyclists are automatically ejected from a competition if their rate is discovered to be higher than the 50 per cent threshold for their own safety. Parma's reserve goalkeeper, Alessandro Nista, was tested at 63 per cent on July 27th.

Revelations of this sort have been occurring on an almost daily basis in Italy, with the country's top drugs testing laboratory at Acqua Acetosa in the eye of the storm since it was revealed four weeks ago that only a fraction of the 4,000 samples sent there by clubs were tested for steroids.

Meanwhile, there were further revelations yesterday from Willy Voet, the team masseur at the centre of the Festina team drug scandal. According to Voet, the blood tests intended to combat the use of EPO in cycling are "a joke".

In an interview with L'Equipe yesterday, Voet described in detail for the first time how cyclists can easily cheat the test.

The sport's drug scandal began to unfold when Voet was stopped by customs near Lille on his way to the Tour de France. Since then six of the team have confessed to police that they were regular users of the drug, and three, including the double Tour of Spain winner Alex Zulle, have been banned for eight months.

The blood test, introduced in March 1997 after increasing evidence of EPO abuse, is not a drug test in the strictest sense of the word but a "health test".

Blood samples are taken from the cyclists and the quantity of solid matter, the haematocrit level, is measured. If it is over 50 per cent the rider can not compete. The test does not prove EPO use; the use of the banned drug is merely one of several factors which can thicken the blood.

According to Voet, cheating the test is a simple matter of rehydration to dilute the blood so that the percentage of solid matter goes down. "You just bung in a litre of water with a compound containing 0.09 per cent sodium, inject it all in, because there is no danger, and the job is done. Twenty minutes later the haematocrit goes down by about three points."

According to Voet, riders are given at least 90 minutes' warning before the tests, so there is plenty of time to dilute the blood.