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Samaranch: IOC will win war on drugs
LAUSANNE, Switzerland (Reuters) -- The war on performance-enhancing drugs in sport can be won, but will be a long, hard struggle, outgoing Olympic president Juan Antonio Samaranch said on Monday. Reacting to Spanish media reports that he had conceded defeat in the fight to rid sport of doping, a defiant Samaranch told journalists at an informal breakfast meeting that the International Olympic Committee (IOC) would never surrender to drug cheats. "I said it was very difficult, there will be many battles but never did I say never," said Samaranch, who was quoted in the Spanish daily El Pais as saying the war against drugs would never be won. "The war is very difficult," he said. "You find ways to discover drugs but there are new drugs coming. "But I said with the new World Anti-Doping Agency, there is a very good collaboration now between the world of sport and governments. "For the last few years, governments have become very interested in this fight. "But the end of this fight is very far from won." While the battle against doping in sport rages on, Samaranch declared the fight against corruption within IOC ranks over. The last years of Samaranch's 21-year reign, which will end with the election of a new president on July 16, were dominated by the Salt Lake bribery scandal, which led to sweeping reforms and the expulsion of 10 IOC members for breaking rules on accepting gifts from the U.S. city when it was bidding to host the 2002 Winter Games. Looking back on the biggest crisis in the Olympic movement's history, Samaranch said he believes the IOC acted swiftly and decisively, putting in place reforms to prevent such things from happening again. The most important among those reforms was the banning of visits by IOC members to bidding cities. But as Samaranch prepares to take his final bow, the thorny issue looks set to take center stage again at the IOC Congress in Moscow, with South Korea's Kim Un-yong, considered a top contender for the Spaniard's post, saying he will reinstate visits if elected. In a sharp rebuke of Kim's candidature, Samaranch said he was confident the reforms he drove through would remain in place. "I maintain that visits of members of the IOC to bidding cities have stopped," said Samaranch. "This is not a decision of the president, it is a decision of the session and I believe they will be wise enough to maintain this policy. "I think we solved the corruption because we acted very quickly. "Three or four months after the scandal of Salt Lake City we had the special session in Lausanne and expelled some members. We faced these difficulties because of visits of IOC members to bidding cities." Recalling the best and worst moments of his time in charge of the Olympic movement, Samaranch was quickly able to pinpoint the highs and lows of two decades of unprecedented turmoil and success. "The finest moment for me was the end, Sydney, my last Games, because they were the best in Olympic history," Samaranch said. "That was not just my definition, the mass media agrees. "Also I cannot forget the Games in my city Barcelona and in the Winter Games, the best organized were in Norway in Lillehammer. "These were the three main moments of my presidency. "The worst moments, the first was the boycott of the Soviet Union and the Communist countries of Los Angeles. "Second was the crisis we faced with the Salt Lake City bid." Away from the boardroom, Samaranch said two moments stood out above all others. They were the stirring gold medal performance by British ice dance pair Jayne Torvill and Christopher Dean at the 1984 Winter Games, and Emil Zatopek's golden treble at the 1952 Helsinki Summer Games. "It's not easy but one sporting moment was in Sarajevo in figure skating when Torvill and Dean for the first time got 10s from nine judges dancing Bolero," recalled Samaranch, who will be honoured with a testimonial soccer match on July 27 between Real Madrid and Lausanne Sport in the Olympic capital. "But the most important moment was maybe in 1952 in Helsinki. "I was there as a journalist, and the three victories of Zatopek. "But it was mainly his last one when the all the stadium shouted 'Zatopek, Zatopek,' at this moment I understood that the Olympic Games are different from all the other sports in the world."
Copyright 2003 Reuters Limited. All rights reserved.
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