Home > News > Doping Control >

Doping, ethics and elections - the hottest summer!

2013-07-30 10:29 AIPS

MILAN, July 30, 2013 - This is a very hot summer for world sport. Many things are happening and perhaps others will happen. Sport is feverish, both at the athlete and senior manager levels. But we journalists must also face dangerous obstacles and barriers which intend to limit and perhaps cancel our professional honesty.

Doping - The doping scandal in athletics, which has swept away famous champions, was just a few days ago. ‘Role model’ athletes have fallen into the net and others could soon follow. It’s true, the anti-doping structure is making inhuman efforts to beat this social cancer and succeeds in achieving objectives that seemed impossible. But it’s still not enough. The national and international federations are doing their best to shatter the incrustations of the past, which don’t allow getting to the root of the problem and finding a definitive solution. But we’re still taking the first steps, because the sins of the past have still not been totally eradicated.

Everyone’s involved - Doping is not an ailment that corrupts just a few sports but has contaminated the environments, some of which haven’t yet started a real offensive but flatter themselves with pseudo provisions. There are no free zones. Everyone must make an effort to achieve a real result because corruption is only beaten when there is a united front. Sport must be a civil education, it must fight for the physical and mental health of athletes and the senior managers must not forget this. The undergrowth of the managers should be strictly regulated a honest ones also risk being swept away by the cunning. There must be teamwork and no cultivation of personal patches. We live in suspicion and it’s a horrible feeling, because we grew up believing in positive values. It’s a moral and cultural question. We mustn’t forget that sport has the power to unite peoples and it mustn’t separate them in the interests of a few.

The prosthesis of disagreement - The exceptional result of the Brazilian Oliveira, champion at the London Paralympics has ran a blistering 200 m in 20”66 in Lyon will trigger another storm. The athlete uses new prostheses and his running technique is taking him to incredible results for a double amputee. He’s young and, in a couple of years, he may be able to find himself in the wake of Bolt. It’s a human case to study and analyse in depth before making a final judgement, but it must undoubtedly be faced to avoid poisonous, counter-productive controversy.

The Olympic elections - The Presidency of the IOC will change in September; there are six candidates and the winner will have to face a very delicate period for the Olympic future. The international federations are on the alert as they intend to create new equilibria and they’ve shown this with the choice made in the election of the new chairman of SportAccord, the sign that gathers all of them, although it’s still divided into opposing currents. A clear signal came from St Petersburg - the agreements that have regulated world sport today must be changed. We’ll see how. Let’s hope that good sense prevails.

Freedom of the press in danger - The French Sports Press Union (UJSF) is in bitter conflict with the executives of the Olympique Marsiglia football team which demanded the closure of its press conferences to TV and radio, offering in exchange less than two minutes of images produced by their troupe and adding insult to injury, they intended to ask for payment for the extra two minutes. French colleagues contacted all the other associations to find out their position on the matter and the response was decided and united - no to this ban. The international intervention was immediate and so the French Minister of Sport was convinced of the goodness of our action and the senior managers of Olimpique Marsiglia have changed tactics and will no longer lock the doors. French colleagues showed courage and they should have the merit for this success in the defence of our freedom of expression. We should continue along this road. (By Gianni Merlo, AIPS President)

Related Story