Dick Pound - Former President, World Anti-Doping Agency HARDtalk

agencies that are supposed to prevent athletes using drugs?

What can now be done about it, and should all sporting success be

Dick Pound, welcome to HARDtalk. Ages 28 years since you were the

Canadian Olympic official who had deal with the fallout with the Ben

Johnson doping scandal at the 1998 Seoul Olympics. Has anything

changed? Has doping become any less of a problem in the elite

international sports? It is probably a greater problem in the sense that

it is more sophisticated and better financed and organised. It is a ten

most game of cheating and detection and it has moved along -- cat and

mouse. The teachers are still ahead? The teachers are always ahead. He or

she knows what they are going to take and when they're going to take

it and you have to find a way to detect it. You were the founding

chief of the World Anti-Doping Authority. You have spent a lot of

your career focused on the crusade against doping. Would you say there

has been a lack of will on those who govern and administrate

international sport to deal with this? In general terms, yes. It

seems to be easier to deny then to try to do something about it and

every time you catch somebody, instead of the cup being half full,

you have found someone who is cheating and taken them out, they

regarded as the cup being half-empty and it is a terrible comment on

their sport and their leadership. Let's talk about punishment and

deterrence. Even when you were the boss of the World Anti-Doping

Authority, there were questions about the degree to which you and

your colleagues were committed to meeting a punishment that would

really send an effective message. To take one random example, this

printer Justin Gatlin, not once but twice he has been found to have used

illegal substances. The first time his punishment was reduced to one

year out of athletics and the second time it was reduced to four years

from eight out of athletics and he has still managed to compete at the

top level in Olympic Games and win medals. Doesn't that case suggest

that you and many others have completely failed to establish real

deterrence? We are far from perfect. But when we started it was

a major fight to get all of the sports to come together to agree

that the default punishment would be two years. What about a lifetime?

What about it? As a former Olympic athlete, I say, we all promise to

play by the rules. You didn't and I don't want to play with you

anymore, ever. That's what I'm saying but you never impose a

lifetime ban? None of the state courts will uphold it. Let's also

talk about collective punishments. The IAAF, the body that governs

international athletics, ask you to run a report last year on what is

happening inside Russia. It was actually WADA. IAAF was part of the

target. As a result of your report, the IAAF suspended Russia and

Russian athletes from international competition. In athletics only. Was

that the right thing to do? For sure. It was clear. Our report made

it clear that the entire system was corrupted. So collective punishment.

I don't know if you are believing that every single Russian athlete

takes illegal substances, but if you are not, you have to accept that

some innocent Russian athletes will suffer because of the actions of

those who take the illegal substances. I think that's what you

have to do to deter it. The athletes are all part of the system. Even if

you are not taking this stuff yourself, you look around at all

your teammates and you see that they are. So you are complicit, whether

you are injecting or not. It is a different issue. In your view, given

what you established, you use to some very harsh words, deep-rooted

cultural treating in Russia, state-sponsored doping you called

it. Even what you learned, do you believe that Russian athletes should

be suspended, barge, blocked from participation in the real Olympic

Games? We wrestled with that and it really wasn't the call of the

commission to do that. Our conclusion was that if they owned up

and started to try to fix it as of November last year when we gave our

report, we thought it would be possible for them to get it cleaned

up in time for Rio. That is as far as we went. That has been punted to

the IAAF who has suspended them, so the Russians are already outside and

trying to get back in. The German ARD network ran a document in March

come along after November where they appeared to find evidence that many

of the systemic problems that you have highlighted were still in

place. Key personnel who were allegedly involved in the doping

system had not been removed, it appeared that there were still

warning signs that the doping culture was continuing. On that

basis, you presumably have concluded Russia should be barred? No, once we

do our report, we are like a surgeon, we do the incision, so what

happened get out. Now the IAAF has its own task force working on this,

chaired by an independent group who used to be with WADA. But her voice

is very powerful and I am asking for your assessment. If you know that

for example, a suspended coach is still, according to the German

documentary, working with either the athletes, if you know that other key

officials at the Russian anti- doping agency and the Russian sports

ministry have not been changed, would it be your opinion that that

suggests Russia hasn't made the steps necessary to get back to the

X? I don't know what they know yet. -- to the Olympics. If they were

just changing deck chairs on the Titanic and moving people around

come out of sight and out of mind, then I would say there hasn't been

the kind of change that we think is required. The reputational risk here

is with the IAAF. What the Russians say, and this has just come out

recently, is that they are prepared to have three independent doping

tests for the athletes in the run-up to Rio, supervised by the IAAF, they

are prepared to have independent IAAF officials work with their anti-

doping agency inside Russia as a form of independent monitoring. The

minister come out the Russian sports Minister, says we are now

implementing all necessary measures. Would you take all necessary

measures. Would you take a look ministerial statements have to be

taken -- would you take a look at at at face value? Ministerial

statements have to be taken for what they are. The task force will be

looking at that very closely what the minister says is not anywhere

near as important as what they find in practice. They find in practice.

For ways to get them back, if they haven't. You are not going to get a

cultural change that way. Are you sure about that? It seems to me that

your successors come at the head of the World Anti-Doping Authority and

Sebastian Coe, the head of the IAAF have made noises which suggests that

on balance, they would prefer to see Russia and Russian athletes at the

Olympic Games than not? Is that the right message to send? I think it

is, you want to encourage the conduct change. What about

deterrence? That is the reputational hit that Russia has taken so far. It

is going to be a much bigger hit if they can't compete in the next

Olympics. It will be. Isn't that the point? May be -- maybe sports

administrators at high level are not prepared to take the tough

decisions. Are prepared. I was as surprised when I saw what was

written on our report in day one and day A2. Within a week, the IAAF had

thrown them out and two weeks later, WADA declared the anti- doping

agency in Russian noncompliance which means they are out. Until they

are invited back in and to signal that will be sent if they are

invited back in before the Olympics so that Russian runners can once

again be racing around that track at Rio, what kind of the signal will

that send? That in the end it's OK? It's not OK. What you are looking

for in the Olympics is to try to get everybody there, providing they are

following the rules. But that is the big proviso, is it not? In all

honesty, given reporting, investigation, years of experience,

do you think that the culture which produced the systemic doping in

Russia that you exposed has fundamentally changed? No, I don't

think it has. That is going to take time. They have a whole bunch of

people in the system, like cycling in the 90s and 2000, who were

there, who were embedded and did all of this stuff on the old Soviet

circuit and you can extract what you want from their. -- there. I don't

think you are going to get a cultural change but you can produce

conduct change and if I were in that place, I would say, we don't want

them in endless week, the international Federation, are

satisfied that everybody will be on even field of play and they are

clean. Isn't one of the biggest problems in the sense of inviting

you to reflect on what you've learned from 20- 30 years in elite

level sports administration, is one of the biggest problems that

athletes themselves are in denial? They don't tell the truth. They lie.

I'm not even telling about athletes who cheat themselves but those who

know others are cheating but don't front up about it. There's so much

and lying within athletics from athletes. There is. And certainly

the ones who are doping, they can look you in the eye as Marion Jones

and Ben Johnson did to me and say, no I am not on drugs. When you

looked at them and 88 and were trained to manage the situation and

asked Ben Johnson if he did it...? I said, I am not going to go in front

of my colleagues and try to defend you if I know that you are guilty

unless you tell me you are. So I took him down the hall, into the

bathroom, close the door and asked him if he was on anything. --

closed. Barefaced lying to the guy who's tried to help him. So I said,

looks, I will do what I can but in those days, if they found

something, you are pretty sure it's fair, then they are far more likely

to miss it and find it. Whatever it was, he had had a very steep hill to

climb. One of the WADA panel members I saw quoted recently, Richard

McLaren, said the tradition in sport is silence. Always deny. Most

athletes in our investigation refused to call out other athletes.

Why is that? The context here was Russia. Russian athletes in Russia.

The system is you don't rat out anyone. Or your sport career is

finished and you may be in physical danger. ARD did not run that

programme when whistleblowers were outside Russia. That is how serious

that is. That raises the question, do you believe whistleblowers are

being properly looked after in this murky world of international sport

cheats? They are not an international federations have been

the worst in dealing with the whistleblowers. George Jackie from

Germany, when he informed on Lance Armstrong, the president of the UCI

Kolbe the informer scumbags. Not the perpetrator -- called the. As you

said, in Russia it is potentially life-threatening to claim that

illegal things are happening inside the system. Right. So why, when one

looks at what you have just said, the fact that sports governing

bodies are not strongly enough defending these whistleblowers and

protecting them, why would anybody take the risk? That is the issue and

it will be hard to give evidence unless we can make

Everything you were telling me in this interview suggests that there

is still a profound problem at the top of global sports administration

and those at the very top of still not taking it very seriously the

pillar that is my conclusion and it is inescapable. Which you include

Sebastian Coe in their? No, I would think he's a wake-up call of huge

importance. He gets it. He may not have got it before but he gets it

now. Here is what puzzles me. You wrote a report looking at the

failings of the IAAF that governs athletics and pointed to issues that

went to the very top of the organisation. You also looked at

those at the run the lower, including Sebastian Coe, saying that

he had failed to take seriously the evidence of doping and tests that

suggest that serious systemic problems existed inside the sport.

You wrote that report and then, the question was who do should take

over? Sebastian Coe wanted the job and you could very powerfully said

that with your record you were the last man to be Mr clean up. Why

didn't you? I believe strongly that if you don't yourself into the whole

you are the best person to get out. We did it when I did the salt lake

city investigation. We sold our problem on our own. And the power is

so concentrated in the International Federation in the resident that the

board is all but irrelevant. You said to me that Sebastian Coe was

one of the guys involved in digging the hollow, what on earth in all of

that qualifies him to clean it up? I really don't think he was and if he

was doing it on the board it was with his left hand. In 2003 up until

2013 he was 99% focused on London and getting to deliver London. Even

after all of the revelations and the Sunday Times leaked thousands of

suspicious but tests over a decade indicating at least 800 test had

flagged up suspicious findings, including from some of the world's

most famous award-winning athlete. Sebastian Coe's response was that

they declared war on my sport. I take pretty great exception to that.

We cannot be betrayed as a sport in any way dragging our heels. He was

circling the wagons around a defensive bunker and he was not

saying that this was disastrous and we had to change everything to root

out the cheats. I had to tell you that our commission found that that

report did not have any substance. That was the opinion of a couple of

scientists who thought that they should have done something and in

fact, nobody in international sport did because you could not get past

the Court of Arbitration for Sport. OK, so you can challenge the

findings, but your immediate gut reaction to those who are blowing

the whistle and those who are raising questions have declared war

on my sport, is that a sensible way for the current president of the

IAAF to behave. He was electro candidate at that point. You say

things in a campaign that you probably don't do when you get into

a seat of power. He should not carry that mindset with him today. He is

not in a bunker. He is out there tried to put Humpty Dumpty back

together again. But sometimes he has to be abandoned and you have to make

a fresh start. Let us give them a chants. -- chance. This is what they

say about the IAAF. If anything encapsulates the existential crisis

engulfing the athletic Federation Right now, it is this, it is that

Sebastian Coe is seen as the best man for the job. I think they are

very lucky to have somebody like him. Look around the IAAF Council

and ask yourself, is there anybody here they could do a better job than

this. Is there a possibility that you are in the end, for all of your

efforts to root out drugs in sport, you are an insider and your natural

inclination is to support the guys who worked their way through the

global sports bodies and have served their time, paid their dues will be

nice to you and you have been nice to them. It is all to club like an

insider like. If I'm an insider I'm an outsider it insider. One of the

reasons I'm not the president is because I say what I think about

these things. And what I said about Sebastian, it was a lynch mob and I

can remember very clearly in that press conference and I came to talk

about our findings. And there was a gaggle of folks there were therefore

a lynching and I don't do lynchings. What about tennis because there is a

sport which entirely depends upon the glamour, the star power, the

reputation of its key individual players but they don't really want

to know that some of these people... I think I have a long way

to go and one of the Golden girls, Maria Sharapova, and when I heard

this and saw the press conference, who on earth is advising her? She

claims she was using a drug that had not been listed as an illegal

substance for many years and she just did not realise, forgot to

address the issue that had been listed as a banned substance. I am

sorry but if you're running a $30 million a year so enterprise which

depends on you to be on the courts swinging a tennis racket, you down

well paid attention to these changes. Should that defence in this

new deterrent filled world of yours come with a lifetime ban in your

view? For a first offence, no. First offence, new drug, you would never

get away with that. But certainly she is facing a sanction and the

hearing is probably ongoing as we speak. Let us end with this thought

about whether sport has been fundamentally spoilt. The USA

spectator and me as well, is there any point when you look at elite

level sport in really taking it at face value, the nature of those

performances? Yes and no. For instance I don't watch cycling any

more because I just don't care. To -- too Rocky. I hope they are

cleaning up a bit but I'm from Missouri... Show me. Even in

athletics, I don't how you watch but if I watch 100 metre race, I watch

the race and the excitement, and then I look up at the time and it is

not one of those things where you look at the clock and when the clock

stops you try to go down and figure out who got there first. It can

still be exciting but what I don't like is the uncertainty and when

that disappears. If you get 1% advantage, in a ten second 100

metre, that is one major. There is no split on the face of the planet

that would not be happy to win by one metre. Is the public loses

interest in the fact that it is all fixed and everybody is doing it.

They going to stop watching. Sponsors will figure out that their

audience is unavailable, broadcasters will realise the same

thing and they will stop covering of. How close to that the doomsday

in international elite sport are we? Welfare are a number of tipping

point. I thought Ben Johnson was going to be more than it was. That

was 26 years ago. The scandal led to the formation of a World Anti-Doping

Agency was another one. The thing with the Russians, and everybody

knew it but you could not prove it. I think that is one of the reasons

that everybody is ready to act very quickly. But that is to me that if

the Russians are backing Rio, there is reasons to be bravely suspicious

and disappointed. And this is where I say that the IAAF have to say that

we are morally satisfied that everybody on the field of play has

not been doping. If they can't say that they do have a problem. Dick

Pound, we have to end there but thank you for being on HARDtalk.

Thank