IOC are not to be sniffed at

WINTER OLYMPICS: Before Britain's Winter Olympic squad left for Salt Lake City last month they were given a lecture by Michelle Verroken, the head of ethics and anti-doping at UK Sport, the organisation responsible for drug testing in this country, writes Duncan Mackay

She emphasised how important it was when travelling abroad to events where there is drug testing that athletes do not use over-the-counter cold cures, especially in the United States, where banned substances are more often included in products than here.

While the British Olympic Association (BOA) has not confirmed whether Alain Baxter was present for this talk, there is no doubt that he would have received written advice upon his arrival in Salt Lake City.

Yesterday the International Olympic Committee (IOC) ordered Baxter to return the first Olympic medal ever won by a British skier by March 31st and referred the issue to the FIS, skiing's world body, who can ban him for up to two years.

He had tested positive for the banned substance methamphetamine, which he says was contained in a nasal inhaler purchased locally. The FIS will decide on his case at a council meeting on June 3rd.

As a veteran of the international ski circuit, he would have been well versed in the perils of buying anything from a chemist's shop. Why Baxter thought he had to buy something locally remains a mystery. He was, after all, part of the best and most expensively prepared British team to travel to the Winter Olympics. The support team included doctors and medical staff on 24-hour call dedicated to ensuring that problems, however minor, were dealt with.

The fact that the BOA has thrown its support so firmly behind Baxter is little surprise. "We believe the offence to be modest and the sentence very severe," said Craig Reedie, the chairman.

These comments are unlikely to go down well with Jacques Rogge, the president of the IOC, and his colleagues at the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA), the organisation for which Reedie is treasurer. Both Rogge and WADA strongly recommend zero tolerance when it comes to athletes who fail drug tests.

Down the years they have heard so many fanciful excuses from athletes who have tested positive that they concluded the only way to make the system work is to follow the rule of strict liability.

That means the athlete is wholly responsible for what is found in his body and Baxter admits using the decongestant which contained a banned drug. If stupidity was a defence he would have been fine.

The BOA's stance will reinforce the view abroad that Britain is still applying double standards and that while they want every other country to apply the strictest sanctions, they are always quick to have an excuse at the ready when it is one of their own.

It is a belief which has been prevalent among European countries since the Seoul Olympics in 1988 when four British athletes failed tests during the games. But Robert Watson QC, the BOA's treasurer at the time, argued successfully for three of them to escape sanctions.

These included the sprinter Linford Christie, who had tested positive for pseudoephedrine; he had drunk some ginseng tea from a shop in South Korea. The IOC gave him "the benefit of the doubt" and four years later he was crowned Olympic 100 metre champion.

The only one Watson failed to save in Seoul was the judo player Kerrith Brown, who was stripped of his bronze medal. Until yesterday he was the only British athlete to have had his Olympic medal taken away due to a doping offence.

It was not hard to feel some sympathy for Baxter yesterday. It may seem that he is the victim of a system designed to catch sporting cheats, but which too often seems capable of netting innocent victims. He, however, has only himself to blame.

Guardian Service.