Olympic family proposes WADA take over testing (Part I)

In the aftermath of the “revelations” made by the Sunday Times-ARD report about several medallists in major track and field championships having had “suspect” blood test values during the period 2001-2011, the Olympic family seems to be veering towards the view that an independent agency has to take over the task of dope testing.

The Festina affair in the 1998 Tour de France, when large cache of banned drugs was recovered, eventually led to the birth of the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) in 1999. The International Olympic Committee (IOC) had then taken the initiative in forming an independent agency which would co-ordinate the efforts of the International sports bodies and public authorities and set uniform standards.

A uniform anti-doping Code came into effect on January 1, 2004 and WADA became synonymous with anti-doping efforts all over the world though it remained a monitoring agency that set standards for anti-doping agencies and for dope-test laboratories.

‘WADA has come’!

“WADA-has-come” has been, and still continues to be, the refrain however, in Indian sports when an international testing team comes, chasing dope cheats. This could be true in several other countries, too. But WADA rarely dons the mantle of a testing agency unless it is requested to by another authority.

Till the advent of the 2015 Code, WADA did not have the authority to test ‘in-competition’. Now it has both out-of-competition and in-competition testing authority. On paper, that is. It still does not perform the role of a major testing agency despite this new clause in the new Code.

But that role may well be re-defined if a path-breaking change that has been suggested by the Olympic family at a recent meeting in Lausanne is accepted by WADA. That proposal involves WADA taking over all dope testing in all sports. The details of the proposals have not been given out.

IOC takes the lead again

Like in 1998, the IOC has once again taken the lead, as it could only have been expected to, as its President Thomas Bach chaired the ‘Olympic summit’ in Lausanne and came up with the proposal which WADA’s Foundation Board is expected to discuss at its Colorado Springs meeting on November 17-18.

The logistical and financial implications for an all-sport testing agency would be enormous. But that can be worked out if there is a strong will to pursue the proposal. The question of “independence” would also come up repeatedly as it has now in several sports, cycling and athletics being the most recent examples. But such criticism will have to be faced and tackled. The main question could be "can this be a viable proposition"?

WADA is funded equally by the IOC and the Governments. There always have been suggestions that the IOC being full of officials who are presidents and secretary-generals of International Federations and National Olympic Committees (NOCs), complete ‘independence’ for WADA would remain a utopian concept.

The argument goes that International Federations would not wish to expose their sport as being full of dope cheats since that would eventually affect sponsorship, fan following and television viewership.

One can bring in a similar argument to question the ‘independence’ of  National Anti-Doping Organisations (NADOs) most of them, if not all, funded by governments and in many cases completely managed and controlled by governments, like the National Anti-Doping Agency (NADA) in India.

Somewhere along a clash of interest may come in. This is not to suggest that any government would ever think of knowingly supporting doping in sports. But you can't help if a government agency is doubted for not putting in hundred per cent when it comes to chasing the country’s top athletes and Olympic medal prospects when another government agency would be funding and promoting those medal prospects.

The International Federations have come under closer scrutiny and criticism in recent years. Cycling, despite the Festina affair and the resultant upheaval has been a prime example till the Lance Armstrong catastrophe hit it in 2012 and the independent commission revealed deficiencies in the system that are ostensibly being rectified these days.

It is the turn of athletics now following the Sunday Times-ARD reports. The WADA-appointed commission headed by its former chief Richard Pound has been working on the allegations, especially into widespread doping practices in Russian and Kenyan athletics and lack of follow-up action by the IAAF. But the new proposal from the Olympic family has come before the Pound-headed panel has completed its task.

Simultaneously, the newly-elected president of the International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF), Sebastian Coe, has also talked about setting up an independent agency in athletics that could be given the responsibility for dope-testing and allied tasks. He had mooted it well before his election though the shape that such an agency would take had not been disclosed.

Whether the number of athletes mentioned in the Sunday-Times-ARD report could have been proceeded against just because of the variations in their blood values is not the point of debate right now. It is about the fact that so many of them _one in three medalists in endurance events between 2001 and 2011_had suspect values and in many cases they were not targeted for further testing in the ensuing period. 

Even if we accept that some of them might have had legitimate reasons to have returned higher values, like altitude training or dehydration for example, those numbers are still large, too large for comfort.

Sebastian Coe’s plans for independent system

Coe spelt out some of his plans at the European Athletics Convention in Lausanne recently, according to a report in Inside the Games.

"I do want a system that is more independent, that relieves the [IAAF] Members' Federations from some of the pressure, some of the resource implications, some of the challenges of a legalistic nature," Coe told an audience, including International Olympic Committee (IOC) President Thomas Bach, at the European Athletics Convention.

"That will actually mean broadening the testing pool internationally and reducing your international commitments, but allowing you to focus on what you do extremely well, which is national testing programmes and educational programmes.

"It will mean a swifter management around our results.

"It will mean a swifter – I hope – period between testing and sanctioning, and I hope it will release some of those precious resources, that I know you find challenging sometimes when you're dealing with those legal challenges,"

(Contd. in part II)