By Steve Keating
MONTREAL (Reuters) - As the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) prepares to celebrate its 10th anniversary, former chief Dick Pound is proud of what the body has achieved in a decade.
"If you look back at where we were in 1999 and I said to you: 'In five years we will have an up-and-running organization fully funded by two stakeholder groups, a single set of rules applicable to all countries, all athletes and all sports, an international convention ratified by 130 countries under UNESCO...' you would have said: 'We should go and get you tested, what are you smoking?'," Pound told Reuters.
"As I look back on my failed run to be president of the IOC (International Olympic Committee) I think, in retrospect, I may have been able to do more for the integrity of sport wearing the WADA hat than I would have as president of the IOC."
When WADA opened for business, drugs in sport had already become a worldwide epidemic and fair play was a quaint idea from the past.
Doping was firmly entrenched in the sporting culture, largely tolerated, if not tacitly accepted, by those who competed in everything from cycling's Tour de France to baseball's World Series.
With no meaningful out-of-competition testing, a mish-mash of sanctions and banned substance lists, entrepreneurs such as BALCO mastermind Victor Conte operated in near impunity, pushing out designer steroids faster than tests could be developed to detect them.
In the northern summer of 1998, disturbing images of French police raiding team hotels in search of drugs during the Tour de France were broadcast around the world.
Suddenly doping was an issue that could no longer be ignored and the shocking scenes provided the catalyst for the formation of a world anti-doping agency.
"The European-based international federations realized that there was now a problem when they had watched all these Festina (cycling team) folks arrested and taken to jail," Pound, who headed WADA from its inception in 1999 until 2007, told Reuters in an interview.
"They thought: 'Wow, if this can happen to cycling, which is a really important sport in Europe, and in their blue-ribbon event, then this could happen to us'.
"All of a sudden the question of doping got raised to a new high."
INDEPENDENT BODY
Despite a desire to clean up sport, IOC president Juan Antonio Samaranch had little stomach for a fight, Pound said, and regretted his decision to take on the challenge.
"Samaranch said in the presence of a journalist who was following him around one day: 'This for me is not doping, the list is too long and unless you can prove it damages health it shouldn't be doping'," recalled Pound.
"That got reported, as a result of which everybody said: 'All this crap the IOC has been saying all these years is just that; they don't actually believe in it.
"We had to have an emergency meeting in August 1998 because of all this. We got there and Samaranch looks at us and we looked at him and said: 'Hey this is your fault'.
"I told him now the problem is no one trusts the sports any more, nobody trusts the IOC.
"I said, the only thing I can think of is there needs to be a body that is entirely independent."
Pound, who had negotiated billions of dollars in television contracts for the IOC and was in charge of cleaning up the Salt Lake City bribery crisis, continued to push his plan for an independent agency and on November 10, 1999 WADA was officially founded with the IOC and world governments as equal stakeholders.
Pound ran WADA from 1999 to 2007 like a tough-talking, no-nonsense sheriff out to rid the town of drug cheats.
Loud, brash and at times outrageous, the hard-nosed Canadian attacked the doping problem with guns blazing, his take-no-prisoners approach keeping the anti-doping battle in the headlines, elevating sport's dirty little secret into a mainstream issue.
DEATH THREATS
"I figured a large percentage of my job was to get into the faces of these guys to draw attention to the problem," said Pound. "It pays off if you're willing to take all the shit that comes at you -- and there was lots of it."
Some of that abuse included death threats, law suits and bitter feuds with athletes such as cyclist Lance Armstrong, fellow IOC members and National Hockey League (NHL) commissioner Gary Bettman.
Pound's approach produced results though. Within four years WADA had established a doping code, standardizing anti-doping policies, rules and regulations and a list of prohibited substances that Samaranch's successor as IOC president Jacques Rogge hailed as a landmark achievement.
In record time the UNESCO convention against doping in sport was ratified with more than 125 of 193 member states -- covering close to 90 percent of the world population -- signing up.
From a small headquarters in Montreal, WADA has grown into a worldwide agency with four regional offices and 35 laboratories in 32 countries that conducted more than 1.2 million tests between 2003 and 2008.
"I think a lot of what Dick said and did and his ability to sit in rooms and call it like it was and get a little bit rough and get in your face, that's what it took to be successful," said Travis Tygart, United States Anti-Doping Agency (USADA) CEO.
"You have very powerful entities that aren't used to giving up control and particularly not giving up control to independent bodies, who at the end of the day have the power of exposing the dark side of sports these powerful people like to control."
WADA pours millions of dollars into scientific research each year and millions more into education projects.
"It has a direct impact on the sport's pocket book so it took a person like Dick Pound to be a little abrasive or very abrasive where it was appropriate," said Tygart.
"We took a lot of flack at the time for things Dick said but at the end of the day we knew the motives were right and while some disagreed with the tone and abrasiveness that's what it took."
(Editing by Clare Fallon)
