It seems that the rough and tumble world of international sport and politics has claimed another victim. Would be successor to the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) head Dick Pound, Frenchman Jean-Francois Lamour has pulled out at the last moment leaving Australian candidate John Fahey virtually in a one-horse race

For good measure Lamour has fired a stinging rebuke at WADA saying: “I don’t want to be president of this agency. WADA is discredited by the way it handled Fahey's unexpected candidacy." Lamour had urged the creation of a European version of the WADA which he claims would be more useful and effective, because up to now WADA had employed a ‘minimalist’ approach to fighting doping.

If he backed down now, before even challenging Fahey, then what are we to make when the real showdown of defending WADA's position if he was in charge? Where was he when Dick Pound had to convince and ‘sell’ the concept of the WADA to the sporting world and the IOC that the Olympic Games and drug testing should be separated in the first place? It's called lobbying, and while Lamour doesn’t like it, that’s the way of the real world.

'Maybe as an additional deterrent the new head could ‘lobby’ for the creation of a real rather than virtual Hall of Shame'


Perhaps it would be better if he called it quits now rather than later when really challenged on anti-doping issues.

Irrespective though of who gets the top job, the problems confronting world sport seem almost insurmountable. Public confidence in WADA has taken a beating lately and above all else the anti-doping message and testing regime needs to extend beyond the 30 or so countries that have the capabilities to fight against drugs in sport. In fact about 85 per cent of all competing nations at the Olympics do not even bother with drug testing, thus offering plenty of places for the cheats to hide. Other challenges facing the new head include:

• Ensuring that all test methods are beyond reproach and making sure no room is left for clever lawyers to find and take advantage of loopholes such as those which nearly wrecked the Floyd Landis case.

• There needs to be a huge injection of funds for research, education and testing. When you consider that roughly $50bn is generated annually through sport globally, and only about 0.1 percent of that is devoted to the anti-doping fight, it is apparent that the odds are stacked in favour of the cheats.

• A real and concerted effort needs to be mounted now to counter the biggest threat facing sport; genetic doping.

• The banned list needs to be urgently reviewed. Many of the drugs on the list have never been proved as working and that goes for human growth hormone (hGH) as well. In fact no published study has shown hGH to work but perhaps a clue that it does comes from an overnight raid in New York. Employees of a pharmacy in Brooklyn were busted and found to be mixing hGH powder with steroids. Such a product would perpetrate the myth that hGH works but in reality it only does because it has been fortified with steroids.

• Reconsider the impact of illicit drug use and by opening dialogue with law enforcement authorities worldwide debate the merits or otherwise of criminalising these offenders. A positive test for illicit drugs implies possession and possession is illegal in most countries.

• Maybe as an additional deterrent the new head could ‘lobby’ for the creation of a real rather than virtual Hall of Shame so that proven drug cheats would have their indiscretion permanently recorded for all to see. Surely this would sway any athlete with even half a conscience from doping.

• Start fending off pro-doping advocates who are increasingly calling for the legalisation of drugs in sport.

• Ensuring that labs who will be performing the ‘athletes passport’ tests are staffed or consulted by experts in the interpretation of blood tests in addition to those who can interpret the detection of drugs. Indeed this should be a condition of accreditation of testing labs.

As can be seen, the challenges are many and varied and as WADA moves boldly into new territory it will need someone as thick-skinned and determined, and also as astute as Dick Pound to ensure that WADA does not regress as Lamour has claimed.

John Fahey has ‘talked the talk’ before when he was the person behind the funding for the research that led to the development of the EPO test. It was his ‘lobbying’ that saw the Australian Institute of Sport awarded US1$ million in 2000 to kick-start the research which was followed by a matching amount from the IOC.

Dick Pound should sleep easy in the knowledge that someone of John Fahey's abilities and standing will be able to forge a successful future pathway for the WADA. Lamour, meanwhile, can only ponder what might have been.

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