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The events have been run, the medals awarded. And now we wait.

The next couple of days could still see positive doping tests from the Vancouver Olympics as the anti-doping lab processes samples taken in the final events of the Games.

But even if no new positives pop up and it turns out the only doping infractions caught in Vancouver were two cold medication-related wrist-slaps, that doesn’t necessarily mean the Vancouver Olympics will go down in history as virtually clean Games.

The statute of limitations in the Olympic world is eight years. In that time, the International Olympic Committee can order reanalysis of samples taken during an Olympics if advances in testing methods open up new possibilities to detect cheating.

That means results recorded in Vancouver could be rewritten and medals doled out reclaimed at any time during that eight-year window.

“You could question me: When will you know exactly what the tally will be for Vancouver? Well, that’s in eight years time — 2018,” IOC president Jacques Rogge cautioned in his closing news conference of the Games.

The eight-year rule gives the IOC a way to neutralize the jump-start cheaters have on the system in place to try to catch them. Until the labs know of the existence of a new drug or doping method, it can pass under the radar.

“It’s always the same problem. You don’t know without positives whether you missed something that your testing wasn’t that excellent for,” said Dr. Don Catlin, a veteran of the anti-doping effort and the man who directed the IOC drug labs at the Los Angeles, Atlanta and Salt Lake City Olympics.

The retroactive testing rule puts athletes and their entourages on notice that doping with something that’s undetectable now is no guarantee they won’t be exposed and held to account later.

“One of the fantastic things about this is we don’t necessarily have to find it now. We keep these samples for eight years precisely for [this] reason,” said Canadian IOC member Dick Pound, former chair of the World Anti-Doping Agency.

The retroactive testing rule has already paid off. Less than a year after the Beijing Summer Olympics in 2008, a test for a new blood-boosting drug, Micera, became available. Retesting found six athletes who had taken CERA, as it is called. One, Rashid Ramzi of Bahrain, was stripped of a gold medal won in the 1,500 metres race.

A similar situation could happen after the Vancouver Olympics.

Dr. Arne Ljungqvist, head of the IOC medical commission, said during the Games that some blood tests were being reanalyzed because there was a suspicion the lab might have been seeing signs of doping.

It might be use of a new variant of the drug EPO (erthyropoeitin), which promotes generation of new red blood cells, he suggested. Anti-doping experts in Vancouver have been on the lookout for signs of use of a new EPO-like drug, Hematide, which hasn’t even hit the commercial market yet.

Blood doping is used by cheating athletes in endurance sports such as cross-country skiing, biathlon and some distances of long-track speedskating.

Ljungqvist classified the suspicion as “low grade” and gave no indication which athletes or which sports might have been under additional scrutiny. Nor did he say when answers might be forthcoming. Only time will tell whether athletes who competed at Vancouver will be caught for Hematide use.

“My sense would be that we would have seen Hematide by now if we were going to see it,” said Catlin, who had earlier predicted that Hematide would make an appearance at these Games.

“But since we haven’t seen it, it doesn’t mean it’s not there. It just means the [testing] method, it nearly certainly means it’s not ready yet.”

Even though the possibility of positives still looms over the Vancouver Games results, many involved in the fight to keep doping out elite sport are expressing optimism that the likelihood of athletes cheating while at the Olympics may be waning.

“Well, I reckon that the athletes who come here — unless there’s something that absolutely nobody knows about — are much aware that Christiane Ayotte runs an absolutely first-class lab,” said Pound, referring to the director of Canada’s anti-doping lab.

“And if there’s stuff in their system, they’re going to get caught. So that’s a honest deterrent.”

2 drug reprimands in Vancouver

Rogge said the IOC sees a trend in the fact that there were seven cases each at the Salt Lake City Games of 2002 and Turin in 2006, but only two in Vancouver. Turin only produced one positive test, but six Austrian cross-country skiers were found with blood doping equipment and were later banned for life from Olympic competition.

The two cases detected so far in Vancouver were both hockey players who used cold medications with banned stimulants. Both were given reprimands only — a go that puzzled Catlin.

The World Anti-Doping Agency re-added the stimulant pseudoephedrine to the prohibited list this year after several years of monitoring testing showed it was being widely used in competition.

But experts acknowledge that finding no significant doping cases during the three weeks or so of the official Olympic period doesn’t mean athletes aren’t using during the three years and 11 months between Games, when they really stand to benefit most from some types of doping.

“I reckon overall we’ve done a much better job. But nobody will tell you that the job is finished … We’ve covered more of the holes that needed to be covered — but not all of them,” Catlin said. “That’s just the way it is.

“We can be sort of pleased that we’ve got somewhere but we can’t stand up and say ‘We got drugs out of the Olympics.’ Forget that. That’s not the case.”

“There’s somebody out there that’s getting away with it. Or there’s somebody out there developing a new approach that will beat the tests … But clearly we’re [moving] in the right direction.”

After a record gold medal haul and the lift from Canada’s most successful Olympics ever, sports leaders are aiming for a top-12 end for Canadian athletes at the 2012 London Summer Games.

That could translate to a haul of 20 medals — or more.

“We’re going for rank,” says Michael Chambers, outgoing president of the Canadian Olympic Committee.

“We’re going to London hoping and wishing and preparing that our team end in the top 12 countries in terms of total medals at those Games, whatever that total may be. It’s probably in the high teens, low 20s, but what the actual number is depends on the spread of medals at the Games. We look at rank because we want to know where we are in relation to our competition.”

Ahead of the Winter Games, the committee had set a target of winning the overall medal count in Vancouver, but didn’t have any specific numbers in mind.

Canada set a Winter Olympic record with 14 gold and was third overall in medals with 26, a performance that electrified the country and made Olympic athletes such as Alexandre Bilodeau, Joannie Rochette and Jon Montgomery household names.

Besides the energizing lift from the Vancouver Games, about $24 million in annual funding announced two years ago by Ottawa is flowing to summer athletes for training, world-class coaching and equipment.

Chambers says that money will be “in full swing” ahead of London.

“That will certainly provide resources that properly applied and executed upon can really provide that after-burner boost to give our athletes a real shot at making that top 12 list in London.”

Canada has been slowly improving at the Winter Games for more than two decades, raising its ranking from ninth to fourth to third.

For the Summer Games, the hurdles are far higher.

At the 2008 Beijing Games, Canada won 18 medals, including six gold. Canada finished those Games 14th in gold medals and 19th overall. The United States led the medal parade with 110, followed by host China with 100.

In 2004 in Athens, Canada was 21st, with 12 medals, including three gold. The 2000 Sydney Games produced 14 medals, including three gold, and a 24th ranking.

Chambers says Canada want to match its performance at the 1996 Summer Games in Atlanta, when Canadian athletes won 22 medals, including three gold — and Toronto sprinter Donovan Bailey won the showpiece event, the 100-metre men’s sprint.

“We’d like to get back to about where we were in Atlanta,” Chambers said. “That’s the place we’d like to be in London from whichever mix of sports. And that, we believe, would have us rank in the top-12 countries participating in London.”

Canada’s most successful Summer Games were in Los Angeles in 1984, but those Olympics were boycotted by the Soviet Union and its allies. Canada ranked sixth in gold and won 44 medals in L.A. — 10 gold, 18 silver and 16 bronze.

As the Vancouver Olympics proved, Canada’s focus on consistent improvement and its highly touted $117-million Own the Podium financing program has paid off in a record performance. The overall Canadian medal count ranked behind only the United States, with a record 37, and Germany, which took home 30 medals.

At the 1988 Games in Calgary, Canada won five medals — two silvers and three gold — and ranked 13th.

The country slowly improved, ranking ninth in 1992 with seven medals, seventh with 13 medals, including three gold, in 1994 and fourth with 15 medals, including six gold, at the Nagano Games in 1998.

In 2002, Canada was fourth with seven gold and 17 medals, and in 2006, fifth with 24 medals, including seven gold.

Marcel Aubut, a Quebec City corporate lawyer and incoming president of the COC, said the Winter Games have given amateur athletes “an incredible boost” and made a new culture of achievement for Canada at the Olympics.

“It could change along the way but the culture now is to go for the podium and do our best,” said the 62-year-ancient Aubut, past president and CEO of the Quebec Nordiques, a Canadian NHL franchise that was sold and went to Colorado in the mid-1990s after two decades in Quebec City.

“The athletes believe there is an environment and the tools for them to realize their dream and be the best. It’s all that culture that we really wanted to improve based on the Games here — Summer and Winter. What happened in Vancouver will give an incredible boost to summer athletes.”

Children sit on a mattress at a make-shift camp in Talca, in Chile, on Monday in the wake of Saturday’s devastating earthquake. (Mariana Bazo/Reuters)

Chile is asking Canada to provide a field hospital, a pontoon bridge, generators and telecommunications equipment following Saturday’s devastating earthquake that killed more than 700 people, ruined 500,000 homes and displaced at least 1.5 million people.

Chile’s ambassador to Canada Eugenio Ortega told CBC’s Power & Politics that the country doesn’t require the food and humanitarian aid that Haiti required after that country’s quake on Jan. 12, but that it needs a temporary field hospital with surgical facilities, electricity generators for hospitals, a pontoon bridge and satellite phones.

Chile has sent a letter to Foreign Affairs Minister Lawrence Cannon asking for a field hospital, a pontoon bridge and telecommunications equipment, the country’s ambassador to Canada, Eugenio Ortega, says. (CBC)

“The situation is very hard and the human situation is complicated for us,” he said.

On Sunday, President Michelle Bachelet outlined those same requirements, as well as water purification plants, hurt assessment experts and rescuers to help relieve exhausted workers.

Chilean officials have struggled to assess the hurt caused by the massive earthquake and the more than 100 aftershocks that have rumbled through the country since Saturday.

Ortega said he sent a letter Monday on behalf of Chile to Foreign Affairs Minister Lawrence Cannon that specifies Chile’s needs, following a phone conversation between Peter Kent, Canada’s foreign affairs minister for the Americas, and his Chilean counterpart.

The Canadian government has not responded yet with how it will help, but it issued a statement on Sunday saying, “Canada stands ready to provide any necessary help to the Government of Chile during this time of need.”

Meanwhile, the Department of Foreign Affairs said in a statement on its website Monday that 520 Canadians living in Chile have been located while 337 have yet to be located by family, friends or consular officials.

About 5,000 Canadians live in Chile, and of that 1,000 are in the affected area where the 8.8 magnitude earthquake struck.