AOC asks for hard line on drugs
7 August 1998Australia's top Olympic officials have formulated a hard-hitting 10-point plan which could form the agenda of the international drugs summit in Lausanne in January.
Included in the plan, drafted by International Olympic Committee delegates Kevan Gosper, Phil Coles and Australian Olympic Committee president John Coates, are controversial points to financially penalise athletes who have cheated and to throw out any rogue international federations which fail to comply with the reworked drugs code.
The 10 points will be presented by Gosper to the IOC executive committee in Lausanne on August 20 and could be changed significantly before the agenda for the January summit is published.
Yesterday, Gosper said the IOC had reinvigorated its leadership in the fight against doping in sport and it was important that the drugs summit agenda was "pathfinding".
"If people see that the agenda will be business as usual, it will dent our credibility," he said.
"Others will come into the executive meeting with their own agendas, but we are all focused in the fight against drugs.
"Maybe the public and the corporate world views that the IOC leadership is not coming up with new initiatives and ideas. This is where we need to regain the moral high ground."
Australia's position will be that cheats should be financially penalised as well as suffering a suspension. Gosper said athletes were given significant commercial endorsements which rewarded cheating.
"By penalising the cheats financially, we might bite off the hand that feeds it," he said.
International federations could face a suspension from the Olympic Games if they fail to comply with the drugs code.
"We are looking at introducing non-compliance penalties, the same way as business operates," Gosper said.
Gosper said it was crucial to enlist the support of government agencies like customs and law enforcement bodies to engage in the fight against sports drugs.
He said every link of the chain of such drugs should be subject to scrutiny, from the manufacture to the distribution.
He also called for the drug manufacturers to become involved in the issue because they were inextricably linked to sport.
"We should call on drug companies to tighten the control of the supply of drugs and call them on board to help in the research of undetectable drugs," Gosper said.
"We should also revisit the subject of introducing chemical markers into the synthetic drugs to help in the detection of them. It is a very expensive process, but the drug companies should realise it is their reputation at stake here too."
Gosper said it was important that athletes and their coaches adopted a code of ethics that recognised it was cheating to use drugs.
He said the $US50 ($A80) a year spent on testing for performance-enhancing drugs needed to be increased.
He stressed that the IOC list of drugs should be fine-tuned, perhaps incorporating levels of concentrations required in samples, so that inadvertent use could be avoided.
WHAT THE IOC SHOULD DO TO FIGHT DOPING - AUSTRALIA'S 10-POINT PLAN
1. The International Olympic Committee to reinvigorate its leadership against doping in sport.2. More funds to be channelled into established and proven dope-testing methods, particularly in out-of-competition, without-notice and pre-competition testing.
3. The IOC list of banned substances to be reviewed.
4. Harmonisation of sanctions across all sports, with the introduction of financial penalties for those found guilty of cheating.
5. Introduce suspensions for international federations that fail to comply with the IOC drug code.
6. Establish an international code of conduct through the IOC athlete's commission to re-establish the moral integrity of sport.
7. Introduce an education program for youth and children that reinforces the notion that taking drugs is cheating and injurious to health.
8. Enlist government and other bureaucratic institutions to enact stricter controls regarding the licensing and importation of performance-enhancing drugs.
9. Involve drug manufacturers in tightening the supply of drugs and contributing towards research of new drug-testing methods.
10. Reinforce the edict that sports administrators must never give up the fight against cheating in sport.
