ITALY: OLYMPIC GAMES - Richard Pound, chairman of Anti-Doping Agency, says he will investigate if high blood levels in athletes are positive doping cases

Record ID: 332008

  • Title: ITALY: OLYMPIC GAMES - Richard Pound, chairman of Anti-Doping Agency, says he will investigate if high blood levels in athletes are positive doping cases
  • Date: 17th February 2006
  • Summary: CLOSE UP: SIGN FOR THE CENTRE
  • Embargoed: 4th March 2006 12:00
  • Keywords:
  • Location: Italy
  • Country: Italy
  • Topics: Sports
  • Reuters ID: LVA2Y5Z5IDCAEH6STUFDBD2CYQ4S
  • Story Text: World Anti-Doping Agency chief Dick Pound said on Thursday (February 16) it was "a strange coincidence" that a number of cross-country skiers registered high haemoglobin levels days before the Turin Winter Games opened.
    Pound, also an International Olympic Committee (IOC) member, said after the games he was going to investigate with blood specialists if the cases should be treated as positive doping offences.
    A total of 12 athletes, all cross-country skiers, registered high haemoglobin (Hb) values and were suspended by the International Skiing Federation (FIS) for five days due to health concerns. The FIS said high altitude training was the most likely cause for the rise in the Hb level.
    Pound commented: "For that number of athletes at the same time, two days before the Olympics, what do you think, the odds are one in three million that that could happen."
    The skiers were suspended pending re-testing before their competitions. Several of them had reduced levels after re-testing and were allowed to compete again.
    The IOC is responsible for drugs testing during the Games and WADA's role is to operate as an independent observer monitoring doping procedures from notification to sample collection and analysis.
    Pound, a practising lawyer in his native Canada, said the FIS was brushing the problem aside by calling it a health issue.
    "They have done the tests. I think they are probably concerned that they can't prove doping, so the way they deal with it is kind of a Solomon-like solution. They say that well it would be to dangerous for you to start under these conditions, you might have a stroke or a heart attack or a blood clot so go home and come back in five days and see if you are still healthy enough to start," he said.
    FIS secretary general Sarah Lewis reaffirmed their position that the blood levels were related to altitude.
    The IOC has been trying to crack down on cheats aggressively in recent years, significantly increasing doping tests. So far, during the Olympics it ran over 180 tests which were all negative.
    Pound said that he was generally satisfied with the detection of doping.
    "We are gaining on it. Don't forget that we had to try to make up thirty or forty years in the last four or five. We got better tests now. Five years ago you could never have discovered this. Now we can and we are getting closer and closer and closer, so I think there is a message for a lot of athletes. There are a lot of athletes that stayed at home, spend more time with their families. There are a lot of athletes who probably didn't come to Torino for various reasons. Some will probably say that you know, if I come and I dope I am probably going to get caught so maybe I won't dope," he said.
    Pound, who recently enraged the National Hockey League (NHL) in North America by suggesting 30 percent of ice hockey players were using banned substances, said most hockey players coming to Turin would be clean.
    But he again criticised the League, which only recently introduced an anti-drugs policy, for failing to tackle the problem sooner.
    "My take is that, as soon as you know that you are going to be tested you know that, as soon as you say I am willing to play for Canada, for Sweden, whatever it is, you stop, it is easy. But if you know during the NHL season that you never going to be tested, that they are not allowed to test you, there is no incentive not to do it."
    The chairman added that he hoped clean athletes would be encouraged by this agency's efforts to catch those who doped.
    "We will have to wait and see, this is one of these things where, each day you get up and see what you discover. There will always be people who will try to cheat, there is no question about it. And what we want to do is to catch them if they do, to persuade them not to in the first place. And to asure the athletes that are playing fair that they do not have to get into the downward cycle of cheating themselves, because we will catch the bad guys."
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