DRUGS IN SPORT

Any reader of yesterday's annual report from the UK Sports Council could be
forgiven for believing Britain enjoys a Rolls-Royce drug prevention
programme in sport.

It describes in detail the work of its anti-drugs directorate staffed by
seven full-time officials supervising 100 independent sampling officers
carrying out tests across 48 sports.

It refers to its computerised records back to 1994, its systematic reports
to the governing bodies of the various sports, and its internationally
accredited laboratory setting new performance standards for analysis,
secure reporting, and the provision of expert evidence.

Is it any surprise, with such a superb system, that there were only 79
cases last year in which prohibited substances were found or athletes
refused to provide a sample? Anyone who believes this is the extent of
Britain's problems with drugs in sports - coincidentally announced on the
same day as the Irish Rugby Football Union admitted that three Irish
players had failed tests for banned substances - is living in as unreal a
world as elite Japanese sumo wrestlers. To have produced such a complacent
report in a year in which the sports world has once again been wracked by
drugs scandals - Tour de France cyclists, Chinese swimmers, and the use of
cretine by footballers - suggests the worst aspects of amateurism still
permeate British sports administration.

Tony Banks, the Sports Minister, was right yesterday to talk of the need
for "much tougher policies" and clearer guidelines. He should begin by
giving the UK Sports Council a kick up its backside and insist the
international bodies address the many drug anomalies: such as the ban on
drugs that increase salt (sodium chloride) in the body but not those that
reduce it. The distinction which the president of the International Olympic
Committee, Antonio Samaranch, tried to draw in July between drugs which are
harmful to health, and those that enhance performance but are not harmful,
is false because it takes so long to detect harm.

It should be resisted.

We should not be reducing the banned list but monitoring it more rigorously.

Copyright: (c) Guardian Media Group 1998

Checked-by: Pat Dolan