Wada mess. It was buried amid the jaw-dropping revelations about shadow labs, undercover secret servicemen and the sabotage of London 2012, but Dick Pound’s exposé of state-sponsored doping in Russia did not make great reading for the organisation that commissioned it, either.
Like a parent expressing disappointment in the way his teenage child had matured, Pound, the no-nonsense founding father of the World Anti-Doping Agency who still sits on its board, said that it had become too “diffident” in flexing its muscles over the past decade. The report itself details major concerns with how Wada, funded 50-50 by the International Olympic Committee and national governments, operates. Though carefully worded, they collectively form something of an indictment not so much of the organisation or the people within it but of the manner in which its funders have clipped its wings.
The modern Wada, said Pound’s commission, has favoured consensus over confrontation and is “unduly tentative with signatories in requiring compliance and timely action”. It “continues to face a recalcitrant attitude on the part of many stakeholders that it is merely a service provider and not a regulator” and “needs to continue its educational role, but also to insist on compliance by all signatories”.
In other words it has morphed into a timid beast, tied up in knots by its constitution and funding. As such, it is unable to perform properly the job for which it was created. Perhaps the biggest worry is that it took a fearless investigative journalist, aided by courageous whistleblowers, to uncover this deep‑rooted scandal in the first place.
Wada has much to be proud of since it was set up in 1998. In the face of myriad competing forces, it has drawn up an agreed list of banned substances and sought to maintain a set of consistent sanctions across sport that are defensible both in law and in the court of public opinion. It has done laudable work in trying to standardise out-of-competition testing, educating athletes about its “strict liability” stance and made progress in shifting cultures and attitudes.
But what it has not done is curb the scourge of the determined cheat, backed by a network of rogue coaches or an entire nation. It is widely accepted that between 10-15% of athletes are cheating, with the percentage probably higher in certain endurance events. Testing catches between 1% and 2% of all athletes.
David Howman, its estimable director general, has probably bored himself down the years endlessly warning of the clear and present danger of endemic doping. Two years ago, when the Guardian devoted a special report to the problem, he issued a passionate cri de coeur to make it clear that sport could no longer battle the scourge alone and needed help.
Presciently, he also warned that the IAAF was in danger of becoming the next UCI and, like cycling’s world governing body, being eaten from within by the cancer of doping. Like Pound he has continually argued of the need to move from a culture of box-ticking to one of enforced compliance. Less carrot, more stick and a move from signing up to the code to actually enforcing it. Of course, little changed.
Much of this comes back to two things: money and power. The fight against doping is woefully underfunded. Considering the scale of the task facing Wada, summed up by the professionalism and lengths to which the Russia state sponsored system went to cheat and win, the $26m it received last year is chicken feed.
Consider this sequence: 20, 20, 23, 24, 25, 26, 26, 26, 26, 26. That, in millions of dollars, is Wada’s annual income over the past decade. In other words, it has barely kept pace with inflation at a time when the amount of cash rolling in to the Olympic movement and sport in general has continued to explode.
Unlike some of those international federations that it oversees, nor is it a profligate organisation. In 2014, as in previous years, those on its executive board paid their own air fares to attend meetings. Yet the International Olympic Committee’s new US deal with NBC is worth $7.75bn. Fifa, battered and tainted as it is, brings in $1.4bn a year from sponsors and broadcasters. Nike’s global revenue was $28bn in 2014. Usain Bolt makes an estimate $20m a year. And on it goes. If doping is an existential threat to sport, why aren’t those with a stake in its future doing more to fund the fight against it?
Of course governments should do their bit but the current funding formula encourages a race to the bottom, with the IOC only increasing its contribution if national governments also agree to do so.
Many seasoned anti-doping veterans worry that Wada has been “captured” by the IOC, a shift they claim is embodied by Sir Craig Reedie’s appointment as president. While a seasoned diplomat, in many ways he has an impossible task – as an IOC vice-president and also president of Wada he is asked to effectively regulate his sporting colleagues.
The IOC is never likely to throw its own sports out of the Olympics, certainly none of the major ones, for all sorts of political and commercial reasons. So a properly independent Wada should be given the power to sanction sports and nations.
Everywhere you look there are desperate issues that go beyond Wada. Too much emphasis is placed on the number of tests rather than where they are targeted. There too many sports where the fight against doping is woefully underpowered and underfunded – see the IAAF’s 10-strong anti-doping unit, never mind that they were being hobbled by their own executives.
Even in those sports supposed to be getting their house in order after being driven to the brink, such as cycling, are viewed with a wary eye. Despite having trumpeted an independent doping unit, the UCI’s solution is an unsatisfactory halfway house, with responsibility for results management retained by the governing body. Then there are huge swathes of the sporting landscape – from football to tennis to rugby – where the surface has barely been scratched in coming to terms with the problem.
If Wada was funded properly it could start to fill in some of those gaps. It would still need to work with government funded national anti-doping organisations where they exist (though even those considered an example to others, such as UK Anti Doping, are facing swingeing cuts) and bully as well as cajole sports into testing properly with rigour and independence.
But through its own web of regional anti-doping agencies and specially constituted “flying squads” of testers it could focus on some of the most worrying blank spaces and demand spot checks. Nor should there be any excuse for every single test and piece of intelligence not being shared.
Then there is the makeup of the Wada foundation board: one government representative from Russia, two from China, two from Egypt, one from Saudi Arabia; among the representatives from international federations, one Sepp Blatter. All leading to the sort of conflicts of interest well summed up by Richard Ings, the former head of the Australian Sports Anti-Doping Authority.
“Wada as a whole faces significant political challenges. Fifty per cent of the board of Wada is made up of government representatives. The other 50% are sporting representatives,” he said. “The Russian federation contributes around $1.3m annually to Wada’s budget yet Wada must act as the regulator towards Russia and other nations and sports on which it relies for funding. No matter where you look in this anti-doping system you see conflicts of interest, you see patronage and you see political interference.”
The Russian case should act as a juddering shock to the system. If all the major busts of recent years, from Balco in athletics and US sports to Lance Armstrong in cycling, have proved that it is investigation rather than testing that will catch out the determined cheat then this case proves that an obsession with testing is counterproductive if that very process can be subverted.
The Russian sports minister, Vitaly Mutko, has a warped but valid point when he says the fact his cheats weren’t caught at the London Games shows the testing approach was all wrong. The IOC and organising committees are complicit every time they trumpet a “clean Games” or talk up their thousands of near worthless in competition tests.
Pound dealt with this too and said Wada’s culture needed to change, along with its staffing profile. “Wada staff have the necessary scientific and technical qualifications and have the required abilities to administer the world anti-doping program and to deal with scientific and compliance issues,” he said. “They need to hire staff who will be able to run international investigations throughout multiple jurisdictions in order to assist in the investigation aspects of doping.”
The benefits of empowering Wada to do the job it was created for are pretty obvious. If sport and governments around the world refuse to commit to do so then you have to ask why not.
BEATING THE CHEATING
Owen Gibson’s five-point plan for reform
1 Hugely increase global funding Triple it, quadruple it. Work out what Wada needs to do the job effectively and then find it. It should be a bigger priority to the IOC than a new TV channel. If national governments won’t take the necessary steps, sport should embarrass them into doing so.
2 Make the sanctions stick Empower Wada to set its own sanctions, putting sports or even entire countries in “special measures” if necessary and the onus on sports and governments to get their own house in order.
3 Empower the executive Separate the testing function from any new sanctioning arm. Empower the executive, introduce independent oversight and rigour.
4 Establish a flying squad Put together a team of testers who can swoop into black spots for extended periods to conduct out-of-competition tests. Have countries test one another’s samples rather than their own.
5 Stay one step ahead Further increase the resources devoted to researching new tests and techniques to catch the cheats and invest in investigation and intelligence gathering, as well as scientists and state-of-the-art laboratories.
