November 21, 2003 – As a condition of participation in the Olympic Games, international sport governing bodies must now sign the anti-doping code painstakingly developed by the Montreal-based World Anti-Doping Agency over the past three years. But a groundswell of discontent threatens to disrupt participation in the Athens Olympics.
The objectives of the code are to harmonize doping controls, sanctions, and research so that the fight to stamp out drug use in sport can be won. Ideally, this would mean that penalties are the same from sport to sport and that situations where athletes (such as Olympic silver medalist Becky Scott) are cheated out of their just rewards, can be averted.
Some sports do not test their athletes, while others subject their athletes to rigorous standards. Cyclists, for instance, are sometimes awakened at 6:00 a.m. on the morning of a championship to provide blood samples.
Olympic athletes continue to wince when professional sports turn a blind eye to doping. Who can forget that baseball superstar Mark McGwire actually endorsed androstenedione while the stuff was added to the list of banned substances compiled by the International Olympic Committee's Medical Commission? Over the past four years, a dozen professional soccer players in Europe have tested positive for the steroid nandrolone and received suspensions of between three and six months-a far cry from the two years meted out to many Olympic athletes.
“Harmonization” is the operative word. But there is a queue of dissenters who, having read the code, object to the automatic two-year suspension for first-time doping offences. They are also incensed that, in their eyes, the code does not allow for individual case management. At the forefront are the International Cycling Union and the Federation of International Football Associations, soccer's governing body. Neither body has the stomach for a prolonged legal battle that they predict will occur if their professional athletes are suspended for two years. They also object to what they see as posturing by the president of WADA, Montreal's Dick Pound.
“I don't know where we go,” says UCI President Hein Verbruggen, who is also the IOC's chairman of the Coordination Committee for the 2008 Olympic Games in Beijing. “We cannot accept automatic two-year suspensions. It will not stand up in court. If Dick Pound would say in the code, 'Apply the two-year sanction and if any court cases arise, then we would pay the costs,' but he doesn't say this.” “An athlete in professional tennis who goes to play in [the Olympics in] Athens and tests positive will get two years. If a professional basketball player tests positive he is barred from the Olympics for two years. Big deal. Our athletes in cycling have a ten-year career. It is their job. A pistol shooter has a 40-year career. If you take [Brazilian soccer star] Romario, for example, and take him out of the sport for two years, he could lose $30 million. Take a shooter out and it costs him nothing.”
WADA does not take a lenient view toward “inadvertent” doping cases nor is the organization concerned about athletes' potential loss of income. Instead, the code specifies that athletes are responsible for what enters their body. Dick Pound reacts testily to the objections of the various sport governing bodies, particularly in the area of individual case management, declaring that, “Either they haven't read the code or they need a course in remedial reading! There is no technical reason, there are no legal reasons why there should be any problem. FIFA came to the Copenhagen [world anti-doping] conference in March and was part of the unanimous agreement, on that occasion, to adopt the world anti-doping code as it had been presented,” says Pound.
“I don't know what is giving rise to these concerns. I understand that in cycling where you have got an entire professional road racing section, they are not much interested in a two-year sanction. And if you are dealing with the big professional soccer teams in Europe and elsewhere, the owners of these teams are not interested in having two-year suspensions for players who take drugs. I mean, they don't really care what players have to do to get ready to play and be on the field for 60 or 70 games or whatever it is a year.”
FIFA and UCI leaders suggest they are in agreement with their counterparts in many of the other Olympic sports (including soccer and cycling, there are 35 sports) but they have been the most vocal. On November 7, 2003, in Basel, Switzerland, Dr. Jiri Dvorak, FIFA's chief medical officer, chaired a meeting of international team sport federations, including the International Ice Hockey Federation, International Team Handball Federation, Federation of International Basketball Associations, the International Volleyball Federation, and the International Rugby Board. The UCI was invited as observers. The group gave support to FIFA's position vis-a-vis the code.
“In football alone there are somewhere between 15,000 and 25,000 doping controls performed annually around the world and we just have a few individual cases. It's not a huge number-there are maybe 10 or 15 a year among 25,000 controls,” Dr. Dvorak says.
“We have performed, over 10 years in FIFA competitions, 2,390 controls during final rounds of FIFA competitions and none of the samples have been positive. That's why when we have a positive case, we have to deal with it very carefully and be very neutral and objective. So we have expressed our strong opinion that, according to the situation, the sanction may vary from a warning to a lifelong ban if there is proof of systematic doping.”
Dick Pound says he has had discussions with IOC President Jacques Rogge and both are confident that the renegade sports will sign the agreement in time for the 2004 Summer Olympics in Athens. Ultimately, they have little choice if they wish to compete in the Games. This game of roulette will test the resolve of sport governing bodies the world over in their commitment to end doping in sports.