Wada: Countries could face bans

LOS ANGELES: The World Anti-Doping Agency (Wada) is considering a blanket ban on countries whose athletes regularly dope in the wake of a series of damaging blows for the sport in recent days, acccording to their president Craig Reedie.

He told CNN in an interview that such a deterrent could be “a pretty blunt instrument” in the war on drugs but he was waiting on a report from his independent commission before deciding whether to push forward with the strategy.

The world athletics’ governing body (IAAF) has come under fire for not following up suspicious test results from more than 800 athletes between 2001 and 2012, based on an investigation by Britain’s Sunday Times and German broadcaster ARD/WDR.

“The fact that this is being discussed as a potential sanction is not entirely unhelpful,” Scot Reedie, 74, told CNN about implementing a blanket ban on countries with offending athletes. “It’s a very, very serious sanction because it tends to be a pretty blunt instrument. Maybe that’s required. I’m not sure. It’s never been done.

“I would want to wait until I see what my expert commission says about this.”

Reed said no country had ever been banned from a multicategory competition such as the Olympics over an offending athlete but that there was a precedent for nations being suspended by the ruling body in an individual sport.

“The sport has turned around and said, ‘At the moment, your record isn’t good enough so we don’t want you coming to our events for a period of years,” Reed explained.

“It’s happened very infrequently but I think it’s been effective.”

On Sunday, the British newspaper and ARD/WDR reported that a 2011 survey has revealed that up to a third of the world’s top competitors admitted using banned performance-enhancing techniques.

The doping allegations are the latest to have rocked the sport in the run-up to the 15th World Championships which start in Beijing on Saturday.

The authors of the study, which involved interviews with 1 800 athletes at the 2011 worlds in South Korea, were told to sign a confidentiality agreement a month after the information had been collected and analysed, the newspaper said. – Reuters