The World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) had demanded the power to ban countries from international competition if they are judged to have promoted systematic doping in sport.
These demands come in light of recent Russian doping scandals, where the IOC refused WADA‘s request to ban Russia from the Rio de Janerio Olympics after two reports implicated senior government officials of systematic doping. WADA currently has no authority to ban countries from competition — they can only recommend what they believe the appropriate course of action should be to bodies like the International Olympic Committee (IOC).
At a meeting on Sunday, a proposal will be made calling for the body to be given “graded sanction powers”, allowing it to impose punishments from warnings and fines, to exclusion. In addition, a policy to encourage whistle-blowers will be proposed after WADA faced criticism that they did not do enough to support the couple who blew open the Russian scandal.
The meeting will also announce that Brazil’s anti-doping agency has been declared “non-compliant” after it was revealed in August that it stopped testing top Brazilian athletes in the month before the Olympics.
WADA’s demand is likely to cause a dispute with the IOC again– IOC president, Thomas Bach, has insisted that he does not support “the prosecutor also being the judge”.
Information courtesy of The Times, to read more click here.
WADA itself did a poor job by taking a long time to finally investigate the Russians and they are just trying to save face. Bach is actually correct about a separation of powers being necessary. The real power play at stake here is who is going to get to select the judges and who is going to determine how much power the judges have. Odds are the system will be set up to fail and the judges will have no real power and thats how IOC and FINA want it.
But at this point in time , no international body should have increased powers. None are elected & all are manipulated . Ppl ha e lost faith in the INternational Red Cross who have been outpropagada-ed by The Millibands IRC ( international rescue commission ) .
Witness the upcoming collapse of the ICC because of now proven political interference . Ppl are te olting against these worldwide – if te ent e.ections are a guide . Not perfect solution but its all ppl have .
I can’t blame WADA for making this demand. What’s the point of giving recommendations if they’re going to be completely ignored?
We either need to have an anti-doping organization with some actual authority, or we need to make doping mandatory. Anything in-between is an injustice.
While this seems like a good idea in theory, I think WADA has to do a lot more to prove they deserve such responsibility after the litany of scandals the organization has dealt with the past few years. There was clearly something wrong with the way the IOC ignored WADA’s recommendations for Rio.
They wanted a pony ( an army ) but now begging a kitten ( sanctions) .