Peeing in a cup was never more complicated.

Pants down – nearly to the knees.

Shirt up – mid-torso, please.

“You’ll wash your hands thoroughly,” says the 2010 Olympic doping control officer. “Use little soap… . You’ll raise your shirt mid-torso and drop your pants to your mid-thigh so I have a clear and unobstructed view.”

A urine and blood sampling regimen like this one demonstrated in Kamloops Thursday will be repeated 2,000 times in February during the Vancouver-Whistler Olympics.

Vanoc officials brag athletes in these games will be the most scrutinized in the history of the fight against cheating by chemical means. About 200 doping-control and blood collection officers were in Kamloops Thursday through Saturday for a series of workshops to prepare for the Winter Games.

Organizers staged a mock test Friday afternoon for reporters, a life-like example of the testing the top-five athletes in each discipline, as well as others randomly selected, will undergo.

The Vanoc volunteer submitted to everything during the 30-minute process, save stripping his clothes to provide a real urine sample. The process is a rigorous one with doping-control officials never actually handling samples or containers until they are sealed and recorded.

Instead, the official directs the athlete being tested through a minutia of details, including placing containers in boxes, cutting open plastic bags with scissors and recording and verifying information.

Dr. Jack Taunton, medical health officer for Vanoc, said it’s the first Games in Canada where testing will not performed by physicians, although they will be on hand in case doping-control officers are suspicious that a fake sample is being doled out through a hidden catheter, for example.

Instead, volunteers such as Emmanuel Iheme, an Ontario police detective who has worked as a doping control officer at sports events in Canada as well as at the 2006 Games in Torino, will direct and oversee the tests.

Iheme will work as a station manager, overseeing other doping-control officers as they direct athletes to provide and handle samples.

“We’re the ones who do most of the testing year-round,” said Iheme, who will supervise a station during Olympic hockey. “We’re used to doing this. We know the athletes and test them on a regular basis.”

While most testing is calm and co-operative in its myriad of dull details, Iheme said occasionally doping-control officers must calm and reassure athletes anxious about testing.

One of the chief concerns of Games officials is maintaining a chain of custody so there is no possibility of error or mixing samples.

Taunton said testing is more sophisticated each year and is able to detect the tiniest amounts of banned substances that may have slipped through in earlier Games. Among banned substances under scrutiny are anabolic steroids, human growth hormone and EPO, an artificial hormone that can boost performance of endurance athletes.

“Now we have technology that can test smaller and smaller amounts.”

Taunton said testing is moving more toward blood sampling, rather than relying on urine testing. Vanoc workers who collect blood are trained phlebotomists, who take samples for a living and are loaned to the Games by Life Labs, a company that provides laboratory services.