The director of the World Anti-Doping Agency David Howman suggests that the collection and testing of backup “B” samples should be scrapped in order to save time and money in the fight against performance-enhancing drugs. “People can go to jail on the basis of one bodily sample being collected, and sport really is on its own in collecting two samples.”
Anti-doping pioneer Don Catlin disagreed with Howman’s observation, and said that athletes should be up in arms if Howman’s vision becomes permanent policy. “You’re taking the right of appeal away from athletes, and I don’t think that’s good at all.”
Also Danish sports professor Verner Møller disagrees, pointing to that in sport the principle of ‘strict liability’ rules, demanding that the athletes prove their innocence when accused of doping. This gives the antidoping organisations a ‘completely exaggerated’ advantage in doping cases, if the athletes cannot even check whether the first accusation was false.
– It seems that WADA will weaken the athletes’ legal certainty to the utmost, so they no longer have anything to fight for. The next may well be that there does not need to be a positive test?
– Then you could just judge people on mere suspicion, and it would be even cheaper, says Verner Møller.
Sources: AP, NYDailyNews.com and eb.dk.
