Injection of common sense
Drug Free Sport NZ (DFSNZ) has been accused of overprosecuting recreational athletes caught up in a multi-agency steroid sting.
The national anti-doping agency last year started an investigation aimed at snaring sportspeople buying prohibited substances online.
Up to 80 athletes are reported to have been identified in the database of a Christchurch man who was convicted for importing and distributing the steroid clenbuterol.
The cases are working their way through the system, with the Sports Tribunal and NZ Rugby Judiciary having resolved 22 to date. It could take more than a year to clear the backlog due to the scope of the investigation, which has not only caught those seeking to gain a performance-enhancing advantage, but also those using banned substances for vanity reasons – to lose weight or get ‘‘shredded’’ – and happen to be registered athletes with sports bodies that come under DFSNZ’s jurisdiction.
The sweeping approach has been questioned by athlete representatives and sports integrity experts, including the former director-general of the World Anti-Doping Agency, who believe DFSNZ could have shown greater discretion with the cases it chose to prosecute.
Prominent New Zealand lawyer David Howman, who led WADA for 13 years to 2016, says New Zealand’s anti-doping legislation adopted by the government, as distinct from the WADA code, requires DFSNZ to refer these cases on to the relevant authorities. But Howman questions the way the sanctions have been applied in a lot of the cases.
‘‘The issue for me is do third grade cricketers need to be sanctioned the same way as the elite cricketers do?’’ he asks.
‘‘I helped write the code in the first place, and it was never intended to level four-year sanctions on what you would call recreational or club players.’’
Howman acknowledges the international context in which DFSNZ was operating in 2017 – a critical juncture in the fight against doping – placed them in a difficult position.
The cases came to light just as the international sporting community was calling for harsh sanctions against Russia as the full extent of state-sponsored doping programme was laid bare in Richard McLaren’s report. National anti-doping agencies were encouraged to take a hard line, in part to avoid any accusations of double standards.
New Zealand has a longestablished international reputation for its rigorous implementation of the WADA code, and Howman says DFSNZ’s efforts to uphold this reputation have had an unintended downside.
‘‘They’ve taken this approach to show New Zealand is tough on this kind of stuff, but the irony is you talk to some young people representing New Zealand overseas and they’ll tell you we now have the reputation that there’s a lot of doping in this country. Because nobody reads below the headlines,’’ Howman says.
NZ Rugby Players’ Association boss Rob Nichol applauds DFSNZ’s efforts to disrupt the flow of cheap performance-enhancing drugs into the market, but says the decision to pursue anti-doping rule violations against ‘‘low-level sports participants’’ is an overreach.
‘‘To apply the full force of the code to everyone who is involved