RICHARD POUND, founding president of the World Anti-Doping Agency and chairman of the commission responsible for Russian exclusion from athletics, has told Herald Sport that problems run far deeper and wider than possible Russian Olympic exclusion this summer.
He suggests in an exclusive interview that sport risks losing sponsorship and TV revenue due to a range of corruption issues.
The former vice president of the Olympic movement believes WADA initiatives are thwarted by sport officials with a vested interest in failure, and criticises governments who won't back their rhetoric with cash.
"The system and science is pretty robust," he says. "Where things break down is the people. Lots of people don't really want the fight against doping to be successful, including a lot of sport leaders. Their objective is to get re-elected, and you don't get re-elected if you make waves, or turn over too many rocks.
"It's far easier to deny a doping case, or several doping cases: 'These are just rogue athletes. There's no system of doping, and no tolerance of it, blah, blah, blah.'
"But it's pretty clear in some countries where you are organised by the state, there is far more serious misconduct than just a few entrepreneurs doing it on their own."
The IOC have said they will bankroll the fight on a basis equal to that of the combined governments of the entire world. "Yet these combined governments are not apparently prepared to put in more than $12 or $13m per year, even though it's a huge problem.
"There's an awful lot of talk from governments about clean sport, but you have 206 governments sitting around the table, and you do a war dance on a 1% increase over $10m split amongst all of you. You are not being very persuasive about your desire to produce clean sport."
Damningly, he claims the then International Amateur Athletic Federation sat on its hands more than 30 years ago when action might have stopped the rot.
"The Canadians tried to get the IAAF to adopt vigourous doping controls, and they refused. So Charlie Francis, Ben Johnson's coach, said 'f**k it. If that's the real game, I'm not going to have my sprinter starting a metre behind the Russians, because they are doping and we're not.' So he got into that business, and beat them at their own game."
Pound represented Johnson when he used steroids in the 1988 Olympics, and will discuss doping at Stirling University this month.
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