Tuesday, June 04, 2002
Agency hopes to unify rules on drugs in sports
By TOM COHEN
Associated Press Writer
MONTREAL — More than two years after its creation, the World Anti-Doping Agency is completing work on rules to combat performance-enhancing drugs in sports.
A universal drug code is expected to be drafted Tuesday, a step chairman Dick Pound calls crucial in merging forces in the fight against drug cheats at the Olympics and other international sports events.
“This is going to be a key tool in obtaining the harmonization in the fight against doping around the world,” Pound said at a ceremony Monday for WADA's new Montreal headquarters.
The first draft of the code will be distributed to sports bodies, governments and others for review. WADA officials hope for final approval at a drug conference in March 2003, with the new code implemented in January 2004, six months before the Athens Olympics.
With sports officials acknowledging the difficulty in catching drug cheats, the universal code would define doping, list banned substances and set penalties to end the current system of multiple sports bodies imposing different rules.
WADA was created in November 1999 to promote and coordinate the fight against drugs in sports, with funding from the Olympic movement and various governments. It conducted 3,639 tests in 49 countries from January 2001 to February 2002, with 27 positive results.
Pound, a Montreal lawyer and senior IOC figure, said the agency's main immediate goal was developing a code that “can be applied across all sports and across all countries.”
“The effectiveness of such a code is possible for the first time because WADA brings together the public authorities on the one hand and the sports movement on the other, which between them have the ability to deal with the full range of programs,” he said.
Approval of a draft of the code is on Tuesday's agenda, as is discussion of an international agreement or convention aimed at getting nations to uphold the code.
At an April meeting in Malaysia, the drug agency said its code would distinguish between true drug cheats and athletes who test positive for substances that don't help them perform better.
The new definition of doping would specify that a doping substance or method “has the potential to enhance sport performance” as well as posing a health risk to athletes. Previous definitions did not single out performance-enhancing drugs.
Rune Andersen, WADA's director of standards and harmonization, said at the Malaysia meeting that marijuana and other nonperformance enhancers would no longer be included on the list of banned substances.
Instead, they would be listed in a new “code of conduct” category subject to regulations and penalties by individual sports instead of the global code, Anderson said.
He made clear then that athletes would remain responsible for any banned doping substance found in their bodies.
A universal doping code also could help resolve the problem of multiple testing, sometimes using different methods, by international and national sports bodies.
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Agency hopes to unify rules on drugs in sports
