It would be nice to say that White House drugs policy director General Barry McCaffrey should be told to butt out of the question of drugs testing at the Sydney Olympics. General McCaffrey’s interest in drugs in sport is more an adjunct to his pushing a wider US agenda of zero tolerance and prohibition of all drugs than an interest in clean sport. Australians could more easily support a butt-out message if they had reason for confidence that the International Olympic Committee and the Sydney Organising Committee for the Olympic Games were capable of organising any event cleanly. However, fiasco after fiasco within the Olympics in the past half decade do not inspire any confidence whatever.
It seems that, leaving aside the irrelevant prohibitionist agenda, General McCaffrey has a point in calling for an anti-drugs body independent from the IOC and SOCOG. In January the IOC announced that it would set up a world anti-doping agency. However, the merely setting up of such a body is not the end of the story. Several questions remain: to what extent would it be able to randomly test outside the Olympic Games periods; where should the agency be based; and how independent should it be of the IOC?
Time is running out for SOCOG on this issue. Performance-enhancing drugs have marred the Olympics movement in recent times. Even some of the Games in the 1970s have been tainted long after the event as new technology reveals that it was most likely that at that time performance-enhancing drugs could have been masked so they were not capable of being detected. By then it was too late to strip winners of medals and losers are now left with a sour taste in their mouth.
The battle between the technology that provides performance-enhancing drugs and the technology that enables them to be detected continues. Alas the former, by necessity, is always ahead of the latter.
It would be tragic if the Sydney Games were marred by any significant drugs scandal. Therein lies the force of the argument that the new world anti-doping agency should be independent of the IOC and SOCOG. The IOC and SOCOG may have an interest in a drugs-free games but they have a greater interest in a successful games. If during the games or immediately thereafter some drugs matters arise the IOC and SOCOG will find themselves with a conflict. Would they they put the interest of a clean games before a successful games? Or will they prefer passive cover-up to athletic integrity?
The beauty of having an independent world anti-doping agency is that that conflict would not arise. Moreover, an independent body based somewhere other than Lausaune , where the IOC is based, would be away from the Olympics culture and any temptation to share its conflict.
AND BRIEFLY……Of course, the Federal Government should charge GST on the premium Olympics tickets. The original concession for no GST on Games tickets was when the overall sales plan comprised a very large proportion of tickets going to the general public. We now know that to be a misrepresentation. SOCOG has no right to scream now that tickets secretly reserved for the rich and for mates have been hit by a GST.
And Labor Party screams of foul play ring hollow. Surely it would not begrudge a cash flow from the rich and privileged into the general tax coffers. That is one of the beauties of the GST – no avoidance by the very rich.