A S more than 1000 delegates arrived in Johannesburg yesterday for the World Anti-Doping Agency conference, the departing president John Fahey outlined the scale of the task facing his successor, Sir Craig Reedie, whose appointment will be rubber-stamped on Friday.
Glasgow-educated Reedie, whose home is in Bridge of Weir, is the sole candidate, but must overturn a perception that WADA is "viewed as an irritant, surrounded by stakeholders, some of which are self-interested or conflicted organisations".
That was the conclusion of a damning 26-page report, "Lack of Effectiveness of Testing Programs", delivered this summer by a working group chaired by Dick Pound, WADA president from 1999 to 2008 - Fahey's immediate predecessor and now Reedie's International Olympic Committee colleague.
It will be left to the Scot to restore waning WADA credibility. Goals might include the launch of an inquiry into cycling, suspect Jamaican and Kenyan doping procedures, mandatory athlete passports and brokering appropriate testing for next year's World Cup.
Ahead of the first full conference session today, Fahey confirmed an independent cycling investigation is imminent under new chairman Brian Cookson (whose election cost British Cycling £120,000). "That will happen within weeks rather than within months," said Fahey. He added that WADA needed, "greater power to undertake an investigation when we see there are potential difficulties in both Jamaica and Kenya".
A new doping code is to be ratified on Friday. Fahey said it will place "a much better emphasis on investigation and a capacity where investigations are not conducted by countries like Kenya, for WADA to instigate the investigation themselves".
Since January 2012, 17 Kenyan athletes have been suspended for doping, and this will be discussed in Johannesburg. Concerns over Jamaica are well-documented. Their senior anti-doping officer claimed this week that six recent defaulters represent: "just the tip of the iceberg".
Former world 100 metres record-holder Asafa Powell is the highest-profile defaulter, but the world track and field body, the IAAF, must announce within a week whether it will challenge Jamaica's decision to exonerate double Olympic 200m champion Veronica Campbell-Brown, despite proven use of a diuretic which can mask illegal substances. If the IAAF fails to act, it might lend weight to Pound's claims.His report stated that anti-doping organisations focus excessively on the number of tests conducted, rather than quality and effectiveness. Sports bodies, including the IOC, "take public, but false, comfort" from the large number of tests, which are predictable.
Despite trumpeted improvements in science; co-operation with the pharmaceutical industry, Interpol, customs and other enforcement agencies; and a dramatic increase in the number of tests to 250,000 annually, the percentage of positives remains the same as in 1985: less than 1%.
Conservative opinion is that 10% of competitors are cheating, yet only one in 100 is caught. Aware of this appalling statistic, WADA launched an investigation in 2012 to determine why more cheats are not caught. Yet detection rates have not improved.
Pound's report cited "lack of inclination on the part of WADA to name and shame" sport federations which do not comply with their rules; a lack of widespread testing for blood-boosting erythropoietin, insulin and human growth hormone; opposition to testing programmes by players' unions; different rules for team and individual sports; and doping control officers being threatened and bribed.
The US news agency, the Associated Press, interviewed Don Catlin (head of the test laboratory at three Olympics) after Pound's report was published. He said it was long overdue and that WADA had "damned themselves over and over and over again". Ditto, we regret to say, the Olympic movement, which is disturbingly ambivalent about punishing the guilty.
Pound's report recommends mandatory use of the biological passport programme. Monitoring blood profile over time can detect cheating. Fahey can count it a success that athletics, swimming and cycling have adopted this during his term. But now, monitoring steroid as well as blood profile will be done, which, he concluded yesterday, should become mandatory.
Had this been in force earlier in cycling, Lance Armstrong would not have survived more than 300 tests. How could this happen? Was bribery involved? Was the sport complicit? Will investigation reveal the truth?
Little wonder Pound concluded: "The elephant in the room is the human factor, not the science, not the system . . . There is no concerted will on the part of virtually all the stakeholders to do what is necessary."
A free Whereabouts app will be introduced, helping those on out-of-competition test registers. That's commendable, but if Reedie can broker a solution to FIFA's pressing doping problem, it would further help defuse the belief held by many global federations: that WADA offers insufficient practical help.
Citing "repeated failures", WADA cancelled accreditation of the Rio de Janeiro laboratory due to test samples during the World Cup. Fahey warned yesterday that reaccreditation would not be fast-tracked. Quite right. They would stand condemned if they compromised. But FIFA, due to conduct 900 tests at the World Cup, must make alternative arrangements. This is a far bigger exercise than taking samples from this year's World Championship to Switzerland from Moscow.
This week, we hope the new WADA code is adopted without dilution. Draconian sanctions should be introduced for coaches, managers and doctors found complicit in doping. And international suspension should be imposed on serial-offending sports and nations.
In framing greater powers, WADA must have Olympic backing. Reedie's position on the IOC, and the support of his fellow member, Pound, should make it possible to do that. Provided the will exists.
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