Anti-Doping Should be Job One for IOC in 2017 -- OpEd

In September, the International Olympic Committee is scheduled to select the city to host the 2024 Summer Olympics, the successor to Tokyo in 2020.

It would seem that the vote among Budapest, Los Angeles and Paris will be the number-one decision facing the IOC in 2017. After all, what’s more important than knowing where the next Games will be so that preparation can begin?

While the race to win the hosting rights may get the most attention, the Sept. 13 election in Lima, Peru, may pale in significance to the steps the IOC and other world sports bodies must take in 2017 to ensure the integrity of sport from doping.

This is not the same battle against doping launched when Canadian sprinter Ben Johnson tested positive in 1988. It’s not the same as the challenges faced by cycling and the Tour de France that launched the World Anti-Doping Agency in 1999.

Today we wrestle with the still unfolding scandal over the corrupted anti-doping system in Russia. Indeed, nearly 20 years after WADA was founded, Olympic sport seems no closer to eliminating the scourge of drugs.

Adding to the murky picture are the 100 athletes from the Beijing and London Olympics who have been caught in retests of their samples in the past year using testing methods not available years ago.

The impact of retesting is significant. At the conclusion of the 2008 Games, six athletes had been caught from the 4500 doping tests conducted in Beijing. Eight years later retesting has increased the number of positives from Beijing nearly tenfold to 59. Included in the latest batch of positives this month from Beijing are three gold medalists in weightlifting, all women from China.

The IOC has requested the guilty parties return the medals and other regalia that came with their tainted performances in Beijing. Their names will be stricken from the list of athletes who competed in the Games.

But with eight or more years passing since the Olympics, the rightful winners of those gold medals are the victims of these crimes against sport. It’s an expanse of time that cruelly has robbed other athletes of recognition they deserved.

There are other victims of this sports fraud. The people who bought tickets and applauded the false success of the medalists. TV viewers around the world who marveled at the exploits of the Olympians. Young people in China who were supposed to draw inspiration from the conquests of their Olympians.

Upcoming Olympic Games figure to be victims if the IOC and other sports bodies fail to act in 2017 to restore confidence over anti-doping – and insure the integrity of the results.

The 2018 Winter Olympics are next, with a battle royal expected over the eligibility of Russian athletes, similar to what happened in Rio.

Tokyo 2020 can only hope the anti-doping turbulence has subsided by the time it goes to the market in two years to sell tickets to the public. That will only happen if the IOC takes the decisions needed to make this happen. Looking the other way is a strategy that no longer works in the fight against doping.

Written by Ed Hula

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