Samaranch says dope list must be cut
Posted: Sunday July 26, 1998 02:01 PM
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Samaranch: "The actual list of [banned] products must be reduced drastically"
J.J. Strahm/ IOC/Allsport |
MADRID, Spain (AP) -- The list of banned doping products must be
slashed and substances that don't damage an athlete's health should
not be prohibited, Olympic chief Juan Antonio Samaranch said in a Sunday
interview with a Spanish paper.
For the International Olympic Committee chairman, the recent
scandal involving the Festina team in the Tour de France is "a
tough blow for cycling and for all sports," he told El Mundo
newspaper.
"But the ones to blame are not the athletes but those around
them," he said. "Doping demands an exact definition ... and I
have been asking for it for years."
He denied that the IOC has considered legalizing doping but
argued that "the actual list of [banned] products must be reduced
drastically.
"Doping [now] is everything that, firstly, is harmful to an
athlete's health and, secondly, artificially augments his
performance," Samaranch said. "If it's just the second case, for me that's not doping. If it's the first case, it is."
As for the immediate future, he said he didn't think tests of
blood rather than urine would be a solution.
Samaranch insisted that although the Tour de France episode was
particularly embarrassing, the overall situation was fairly
healthy.
"For example, in the World Cup there were more than 60 games
and nearly 300 doping controls carried out, but not one player
tested positive," he told the paper.
The Festina cycling team, long ranked as one of the world's
best, was kicked out of the Tour de France after the team's
director admitted the team had supplied banned substances with
medical supervision to improve performance.
Last week saw the scandal widening when it was reported that
customs officials found the banned drug EPO in a car of officials
from the Dutch team TVM in March.
Samaranch denied the that the IOC was in a position to impose a
change and said it needed the collaboration of all. A major turning
point for the Olympics, he said, was in the Seoul Games in 1988
when top athlete Ben Johnson was suspended.
"Some said it was a bad day for sport. We said the opposite,"
Samaranch told El Mundo. "And since then we have seen that we are
not alone in the struggle. We have been joined by federations and
sports groups of all sorts and, as the Tour showed, even by
governments."
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