Wada head attacks US call to resign
The beleaguered president of the World Anti-Doping Agency (Wada) angrily attacked Washington interference on Thursday, as he refused to bow to pressure from the US to resign over his handling of the Russian doping scandal.
Sir Craig Reedie fiercely defended his actions in lifting sanctions against Moscow anti-doping agency Rusada in September, and said he felt “bruised” by the saga.
He expressed particular dismay over an emergency meeting at the White House on Wednesday, in which Jim Carroll, Donald Trump’s deputy-director of national drug control policy, joined athletics chiefs in calling for urgent reform.
Travis Tygart, chief executive of the US Anti-Doping Agency, said at the meeting that Reedie should step down.
Reedie said in response: “In a very complex political situation worldwide at the moment, it seems to me that this follows a kind of formula that the only solution to any of these problems is the solution that comes from the United States. I don’t think this is accurate or correct. International sport is subject to international rules and regulations.
“We play our part as the regulator . . . it is not for one country to say, ‘We are right.”
Wada has faced weeks of fierce criticism from a series of national anti-doping organisations and athletes following its decision to reinstate Russia’s testing body, after reaching a compromise deal over allowing access to laboratory results.
Reedie said some of the challenges he had faced had been “intolerable” and he “wished it hadn’t happened at all“, but he insisted he “won’t walk away.”
He added: “I don’t think the world gets better by me not being there.” – The Daily Telegraph