“We’ve got the CFL,” Pound said. “It’s like a bad scene from the NHL. They say, ‘We don’t test in the Canadian Football League because we don’t need to test — there’s no drug use.’ Helloooo. We’re like a refuge for all the Americans… a summer camp for NFL players who have been suspended for drug use.”

This weekend, John Fahey, the head of the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA), publicly urged the CFL to adopt an anti-doping testing program. Fahey was in Montreal for the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) Executive Committee and Foundation Board meeting. Fahey made his comments just prior to the 2008 CFL Grey Cup Final between the Calgary Stampeders and the Montreal Alouettes (“WADA chief challenges CFL to join fight against drugs,” November 23).

“To be here in Montreal on the weekend of the Grey Cup final and to find there is no doping code is very disappointing,” Fahey told Reuters following a WADA board meeting. “I understand there have been discussions and I hope they eventually lead to fruition.
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“There has been dialogue between WADA and the CFL over a period of time but that doesn’t suggest that there is anything imminent.
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“I can only say I think they are draw attention to the game in an adverse way by not having a (doping) code.
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“I don’t see how any sport cannot have an effective anti-doping program.”

The WADA chief’s criticisms of Canadian Football League’s lack of an effective steroid testing program were undermined by WADA board member and British IOC member Sir Craig Reedie who was also in Montreal for the WADA Foundation board meeting.

Sir Reedie hihglighted the failure to implement an effective anti-doping program at WADA due to the noncompliance of over half of the signatories to the WADA code at the 2008 Beijing Olympics (“Drug Rules ‘Not Enforced’,” November 23).

Rules that bind athletes to give details of their daily movements to drugs testers are not being enforced in “half the countries in the world”, it was claimed on Thursday [...]

Sir Craig Reedie, British IOC member and a board member of the WADA, said “half the world” was not operating the system properly – WADA regulations state that athletes must provide testers with their whereabouts for an hour each day.
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Reedie said: “The one issue the world of sport will want clearing up is in relation to whereabouts regulations for athletes.
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“What has come out of Beijing is that half the world operates the system properly and half the world does not.
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“This has come out of a survey done of national Olympic committees, and some are struggling with the whereabouts rules.
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“We have to get the system to work properly so that everyone is operating in the same way.”

The major failure to implement the WADA code by the majority of its signatories compounds the major failure of WADA procedures and protocols to effectively catch dopers. WADA has not developed an anti-doping protocol that effectively closes the testosterone loophole, that has ever detected human growth hormone in athletes, or has thwarted the use of numerous banned blood boosting techniques and drugs. The sad truth is that WADA’s steroid testing program, far from Fahey’s “effective anti-doping program,” is only marginally more effective than the CFL’s drug testing program i.e. no testing at all.

Disgraced former Tour de France winner Jan Ullrich is to pay out a million euro fine to end a fraud case which German prosecutors have been investigating, Focus news magazine reported on its Web site Saturday.

Prosecutors accused the 1997 Tour de France winner of taking performance-enhancing drugs, leading under German law to fraud charges against the 34-year-old on the basis he deceived the public, sponsors and his team.

The United States does not have laws that specifically criminalize doping in sports. However, the Anabolic Steroid Control Act of 1990, passed as a direct result of doping scandals in sports, criminalizes the non-medical uses of anabolic-androgenic steroids. One of the primary objectives for the act has been to combat “cheating” in sports although it has been largely ineffective for this purpose. Instead, the federal government has had some recent success using perjury laws to prosecute athletes who use steroids. Maybe sports fraud prosecutions will join perjury as an additional way of making examples out of “immoral” athletes.

This is good news for the sport of cycling. And it is good news for everyone who believes in second chances. Controversy has surrounded Rock Racing after they have embraced signed or had discussions with numerous athletes who have been implicated in doping scandals including Floyd Landis, Tyler Hamilton, Oscar Sevilla and Santiago Botero.

The 2006 Tour de France victory was taken away from Floyd Landis after he failed a doping test; the Court of Arbitration for Sports determined a doping violation had occurred, specifically “the charge of exogenous testosterone found in the sample by the Carbon Isotope Ratio analysis is established in accordance with the UCI Anti-Doping Regulations.” Floyd is appealing the decision.

Tyler Hamilton, Oscar Sevilla and Santiago Botero were all implicated in the Operation Puerto blood doping scandal. Hamilton recently finished a two-year suspension for blood doping.

Do athletes implicated in doping scandals deserve a second chance especially if they have served their suspensions? Michael Ball responds:

The truth of the matter is that he was penalized; he did his time. He struggled through it. It is a drag, in terms of the situation the guys go through. But I’m here to support the riders. At the end of the day, I’m here to support the riders and give those individuals an opportunity.

Or does the public require that they somehow admit guilt before the public is accepting of second chances as Floyd Landis suggests?

But if you want to create a punishment of some kind for lying, then create a punishment for lying. But right now what you have is a system where, if a person is convicted, they get a suspension of a defined amount of time. There’s nothing that says we’re going to treat you like shit afterwards if you don’t admit to it, and if you do admit to it, you’re fine. If you want to add that to the rules, add it to the rules.

But those confessions also pointed towards another element of the wide-ranging cheating scandal: the duplicity of sports journalists, especially in public television, which is funded by a system of mandatory monthly fees every German with a TV set has to pay. Their commentators had long abandoned their role as independent reporters, but had evolved into cheerleaders chasing after high ratings. Only after the debacle of last year’s Tour de France, ARD, one of the two large public television channels, installed a special doping team and gave them free reign to chase the bad guys. Hajo Seppelt became the man in charge.

Hajo Seppelt’s team was responsible for breaking the news story of the Vienna lab involved in blood doping. But his journalistic independence seems to be threatened by a variety of sources, including the Russian Mafia.

The situation is threatening the reputation of a journalist, who for years had been the only German TV reporter to actively pursue leads and stories about doping. While he insists that he has clear indications that Human Plasma practiced “blood doping in the style of Eufemiano Fuentes”, the Spanish doctor well-known for his stable of cycling clients, he still wants to protect his sources. “Russians and Ukrainian mafia members are behind this”, he said according to a report in German news daily Die Welt. “Fear [is] a constant companion.”

Source: Steroid Nation

The German Skiing Federation (DSV) subsequently decided to take legal action against the journalists employed by the German television station (ARD).  Interestingly, ARD is one of the sponsors paying DSV seven million euros for annual television rights to World Cup events. So, it should come as no surprise that ARD promptly issued a public apology for unprofessional behavior and “journalistic errors” in making accusations of illegal blood doping without proof.

Furthermore, there have been suggestions that “Russian criminal elements” may have pressured Austrian officials investigating Humanplasma lab.