Bouzou Fights For the Rights of Clean Athletes

(ATR) President of the World Olympians Association (WOA), Joel Bouzou, has spoken out passionately about creating a level playing field, where drug cheats do not take the field and the rights of those who are clean are protected.

Bouzou’s comments come off the back of the International Paralympic Committee’s decision to ban the Russian team from competing in the upcoming Paralympic Games in Rio – a decision that Bouzou and the WOA vehemently oppose.

"Some clean athletes have been left on the side of the road," Bouzou told Around the Rings.

"They have done nothing wrong so why should they pay? The WOA is about supporting athletes. Those who are clean need to be supported and we can not accept that they are not present at the Games.

"We are absolutely against the ban that has been taken by the IPC and the IAAF against Russia. There are clean athletes and dirty athletes in Russia, but there have been dirty athletes in other parts of the world but their whole nation has not been punished."

The WOA, who represent the 100,000 living Olympians, have called for a three-point anti-doping plan to be adopted by sports governing bodies, governments and event organizers. The three-point plan is designed to ensure that sport can eventually be fully rid of drug cheats while at the same time ensuring that those athletes who are proven clean can compete even if their sport or country is sanctioned.

The plan calls for fully independent testing, a permanent mechanism to allow clean athletes to compete and dramatically increased funding for anti-doping research.

"Science has to be pushed so that cheaters can be more easily found," Bouzou said. "Intelligence has to increased, because we can see that it is a mixture of science and intelligence which is discovering cheaters."

At the heart of Bouzou’s message is the question over what a clean athlete actually is.

"The problem lies in the fact that no one can prove they are clean," he said. "We can only prove that we are not dirty – and there is a difference.

"What I would like in the future is that we would have a system where we would not have to prove that we are not guilty but that we could prove that we are clean. And once this system is in place it will be perfect – for the moment it is not."

Bouzou speaks on this issue not only as an administrator but as a former athlete. An Olympian in modern pentathlon at the 1980, 1984, 1988 and 1992 Olympic Games, Bouzou knows first hand how important it is to compete on a level playing field.

The 1980 and 1984 Games were affected by boycotts meaning that some of the best athletes in the world were not competing. For an elite athlete, not competing against the best in the world is almost as hard to bear as competing against drug cheats.

"The universality of sport should be reflected by the right of each clean athlete who has made the standards of his or her sport at the highest level of sport," Bouzou said.

"I know when I was competing that there were athletes that were cheating and they were not caught – I was furious about that. The day I won the World Championship, some people thought I was doping because I won. So there is a problem – the fact that you can not prove you are clean. There is a big investment that has to be made into science, and until that there will always be doubt and there will always be possibilities."

During the Rio Games, Bouzou has written to the International Olympic Committee President Thomas Bach expressing the WOA’s support of their work in fighting doping and asking them to consider the three-point plan they have proposed.

The letter concluded by saying:

"You can rest assured that you have the support of Olympians everywhere in your efforts to find the right balance between the most stringent penalties for those who besmirch the good name of the Olympics and sport by cheating, and the rights of individuals who have trained so hard over so many years to inspire themselves and others by their achievements and have done no wrong."

Written by Alice Wheelerin Rio de Janeiro

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