By Sportswriter Ma Xiangfei

    BEIJING, Aug. 7 (Xinhua) -- The fight against doping has made headway in the past four years and the anti-doping workers became "smarter" in catching drug cheats, said World Anti-Doping Agency chief John Fahey.

    Adoption of the Anti-Doping Code, advanced technologies and new strategies in fighting against doping all posed as bigger deterrents to drug cheats, Fahey said on the eve of the opening of the Beijing Olympic Games.

    "The road from Athens to Beijing has been marked with many successes, starting with adoption of the code. WADA will be naive to expect that there will be no doping during the Games but we can be sure that through all the progress in the past four years, that cheating stands a greater chance of being caught," said the Australian.

    After soccer's world governing body FIFA agreed to abide by the Code in 2006, all sports federations signed and adopted it, otherwise they would risk expulsion from the Olympic Games.

    "We can look back four years later with certain degree of satisfaction. Despite of many doping cases in the recent months in the lead-up to Beijing, it is just one indication that the worldwide fight against doping in sport has made a giant leap forward. It is also an indication that the code is a fair and effective means for ridding out doping," said Fahey, who succeeded Dick Pound to head the independent agency coordinating the fight against drugs in sport.

    Seven Russian female athletes were provisionally suspended by the IAAF from the Games when they were suspected to have manipulated their urine samples.

    Romanian middle distance runners Elena Antoci and Cristina Vasiloiu and Italian fencer Andrea Baldini, a gold medal favorite, were also kicked out of respective Olympic teams after 11 Bulgarian weightlifters were caught.

    Fahey said the strategy of targeting certain athletes was based on intelligence, closer cooperation with governments and pharmaceutical companies also played important role in the progress.

    "Testing strategies and tactics are getting smarter. The real progress lies in the intelligence and targeting," he said. "We continue to close the gap on science. We are able to testing some of the drugs even prior to them coming on to the market."

    "We are smarter than we used to be and as each month goes by we are learning more," he added.