Battling to inject fair play

Drugs in Sport Interview with WADA chief executive David Howman: As inevitable as it is that athletes will cry on winning podiums this summer in Athens is that some will be sent home for drugs offences. Part of the game is to see if the boffins can land a big fish at the right moment.

Greg Rusedski was hooked just before the first tennis slam of the year in Melbourne. He's flapping around. He has some explaining to do. The Olympics, a sort of Oscars night party for cheats, is rolling into Greece in August. Already the white coats are waxing their mass spectrometers and human growth hormone (hgh) kits. This is simply deployment.

Fomenting cynicism in sport has not been difficult and four years ago, after the cyclists on the Tour de France fell into a strop over too many successful drug busts, and more than a decade after a bemused Ben Johnson wondered why they decided to pick on him alone and strip him bare, the World Anti Doping Agency (WADA) was conceived. Initially it was seen as a ruse for keeping the public happy and sponsors on board. But it has proved to be more.

Its CEO, David Howman, is a straight-talking New Zealand lawyer. A former commissioner for New Zealand rugby, who at one staged acted for Christian Cullen, and president of New Zealand tennis, he is a believer in what he does with WADA.

"Taking drugs to enhance performance is cheating. I don't think society condones cheating," he says. "We used to because we didn't know enough. You'd have a lot of sympathy for someone like Ben Johnson because everyone was doing it and he was caught. Now more people are being caught and the values are changing. From that point of view it's a moral issue and a legal issue in how you effect sanctions and laws."

Recently it has been tennis and football in the dock, with Rusedski's nandrolone positive and Rio Ferdinand's dash to Harvey Nicks instead of to the urinal monopolising headlines. It is not lost on Howman that an amateur rower or swimmer would be unable to mount a defence like the two millionaires, Ferdinand particularly, with the bulk of Manchester United plc behind him. But it cuts both ways.

"When you have high-profile people, you will have high-profile actions," he says. "That includes legal action, lobbying and even fan action. If you compare Rio with another footballer, say, who plays in division two and misses a test and gets two years, you wouldn't see anything about it.

"High profile cuts both ways and it's a chance now for those entrusted with the sport to send out the right message to show it doesn't matter who you are but that you still get dealt with under the same rules, same processes."

But not the same sanctions?

"Why shouldn't it be the same in terms of months or years?"

In his case eight months was light.

"It would be two years under the code. Yeah, but under the code we expect there to be challenges. The two-year sanction is open to challenge under exceptional circumstances," he says.

"We don't mind Rio appealing and one of the issues from our perspective is that under the appeal the sanction can be increased. I'm sure he has been advised of the dangers of that."

Rusedski's claim is that the analytical fingerprint on his positive sample was exactly the same as seven other positive samples from players who were not sanctioned. The theme is that whatever made the samples illegal came from a product given to them by the men's tennis-circuit organisers, the ATP.

"I don't know what his full story is," says Howman. "The other seven players were exonerated because the ATP thought there was sufficient proof to show the substance at fault was given to them by the ATP. That source was taken off the tour in May.

"Rusedski tested positive in July. The worry is that there could be something else going on in tennis that nobody yet has put a finger on. The question is whether the first seven players were appropriately dealt with."

Less than a year ago Howman wasn't positive about the rut in which WADA was stuck. The USA, a pivotal front in the war on drugs, was reneging on donations and Italy too was holding up on agreed funding.

In May WADA came close to the wall. The US then delivered and on Wednesday President George Bush, in his State of the Nation address, declared he wanted steroids out of sport.

"That's a huge thing. He knows the public are going to support him for saying it. For the last few years we've been battling in the US. The international community have had suspicions, concerns about what goes on there, because they've always been protective of their own. Twelve months ago I'd have said the US are looking like the Chinese were, like the East Germans. But there's been a swing, probably over the controversies over THG and so on."

THG (tetrahydrogestrinone) was beautifully designed and exclusively for cheats. Unlike other drugs, it was synthesised in California by chemists specifically for athletes and with no medical application in mind.

"But the gap has narrowed," he says. "Growth hormone is the one we're worried about and we've almost got the test for that. We're hopeful we'll have it prior to the (Olympic) games. We're saying to the athletes, 'you pee in the bottle and it will be analysed'."

WADA's budget of $20 million a year is around half the amount Roman Abramovich pays out each year in salaries to his Chelsea players. But the lawyers and scientists of WADA work a different vein, moral authority.

"We're there to prevent cheating," says Howman.

"I think there is a need for that. Like sports who have video referees or umpires, who look for other types of cheating on the field of play, that's what we are trying to do."