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Spain's new anti-doping law fails to send hard anti-doping message

2013-03-10 21:59 Xinhuanet

MADRID, March 8 (Xinhua) -- The Spanish cabinet this Friday approved a new anti-doping law in what can be seen as a failed attempt to clean up the country's image as being soft on doping in sport.

The new law has been passed just 10 days before the Evaluation Commission of the International Olympic Committee visit Madrid to value the candidacy of the Spanish capital to host the 2020 Olympic Games.

It also happens in the middle of the ongoing 'Operation Puerto' doping trial, which has been running for several weeks. Although Operation Puerto originally deals with cycling, revelations to have come out of the trial have linked other sports to doping and have raised serious doubts over the 'cleanness' of Spanish sport in relation to doping with football and athletics both so far implicated.

However,for all the statements by Spain's Vice-President, Soraya Saenz de Santamaria and Secretary of State for Sport, Miguel Cardenal, it is unlikely that this new law will actually change anything or improve the image that Spain has of being a country that is tolerant on doping at worst and at best tolerant of the issue.

Although the new law contemplates fines of up to 400,000 euros (over half a million US dollars) for those supplying or treating an athlete and allows anti-doping authorities to carry out controls between 23.00 hours and 06.00 hours, it contains one important flaw: it is still not considered a crime under this law for an athlete to dope.

The fact that doping by an athlete is still not considered a crime in the new law is tantamount to putting a new guard dog on duty, but first taking its teeth out.

Although Cardenal highlighted that; "doping is an industrial activity for manufacturing, commercializing and distributing illegal substances," and a "sector of organized criminal activity which generates important economic benefits for mafias," that attitude appears to imply that sportsmen and women who dope are merely the tools of organized crime who have no free will of their own. ( The new law and Cardenal's declarations fail to consider that an athlete could take a conscious decision themselves to dope in order to increase their earnings, to win titles (and in doing so cheat other 'clean' athletes who have chosen to compete without illegal stimulants) and to attract sponsors.

This is clearly a major error given that the huge amounts of money moved in professional sport these days mean the temptation for some to dope is high and higher still if the possible sanctions are not in place.

Anyone who has read the autobiography of cyclist David Millar 'Racing through the Dark," will remember how he was arrested by French police after EPO was found in his flat, held in police custody and interrogated as a criminal.

That is because doping has long been considered a crime in France, Italy, the USA and many other parts of the world. This makes Cardenal's assertion that penalizing those who supply and administer banned substances to athletes, rather than the athletes themselves, is "the principal factor in the majority of foreign laws," look at best naive and at worst plain wrong.

The new law is at least a step forward from the past: one of the factors in the Puerto trial is that doping was not a crime in 2006 and that the main defendant in the case, Eufemiano Fuentes, who is accused of being behind a huge doping ring, can only charged under public health offences.

However, if it is a serious attempt to convince the IOC that Spain has suddenly become tough on drugs in sport or to seriously alter the image of a country damaged by positive tests to sportspeople, such as cyclist Alberto Contador, then it has to be considered a missed opportunity and a failure that could well cost Madrid the 2020 Olympic Games.

After his experiences David Millar changed his ways and is now a prominent anti-doping campaigner, sadly the same still cannot be said for Spain. (By Paul Giblin)

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