Premier League in doping firing line

John Fahey, the president of the World Anti-Doping Agency, has hit out at the Premier League and other top soccer divisions across Europe for not doing enough in the fight against drugs.

The Australian was speaking at the annual doping results of the Irish Sports Council in Dublin yesterday, but was hugely critical of the English top flight in light of Arsene Wenger’s recent comments on the lack of blood testing and the potential problems that may exist. Fahey said that the Premier League cannot call itself clean until it takes sufficient steps to prove as much.

“Firstly, I welcome [Wenger’s] comments,” noted Fahey. “When people as influential as he are willing to say that in the public arena, surely that particular code will take notice and surely some action may flow. You have to ask yourself why isn’t the biological passport programme happening in the Premier League, though? Not just in England either, but major leagues everywhere in various countries in Europe. There’s no good reason why not. They can afford it but if you want to be able to say to the world our sport is clean and our athletes are clean, then it’s only by the usage of such tools and programmes such as the biological passport that they can make that statement.

“I’ll watch closely to see if there is any action taken,” he continued. “But the situation is this. The sport is a signatory to our code and they are also compliant with the code but the compliance level is a bit low. But nothing in the code says how effective your programme has to be, nothing in the compliance programme says we should be lifting the bar much higher. At the end of the day, this is, to a large extent, a voluntary situation and we’ve got no sanctions if they don’t do things other than to say you are not compliant if they drop below that very basic level that has them compliant now.”

Speaking in a broader context, Fahey also expressed concern regarding the lack of blood testing in team sport across the board, and was also critical of the level of testing done on urine samples.

“There are insufficient blood tests being done,” he said. “There is a lot of evidence where urine is taken and sent off to the laboratory, and they are given instructions not to analyse for all substances and frequently the drug of choice, EPO, is left off. Why? The more things you get analysed, the more it costs. Blood tests are occurring but what I’m disappointed with is the athlete’s biological passport. That’s happening in cycling more than most sports but I’d love to see that happen in professional team sport, in England, in Australia, in America. So let’s be clear, there is blood testing happening, but nowhere near enough.”

The Irish Sports Council’s annual results revealed at the launch showed that no blood tests were carried out in soccer or Gaelic games across 2012. Forty-nine such tests out of a total of 133 were done in athletics, 33 in cycling, 17 in rugby, 13 in swimming and 12 in triathlon. There were, however, 46 urine tests conducted in soccer and 89 in Gaelic games. Across the year, eight athletes failed tests — four were for cannabis — while three tug-of-war competitors and one soccer player were banned for use of methylhexanamine, occurring through ingestion of supplements.

Meanwhile, boxing coach Martin Sweeney was suspended for 27 months for giving banned substances to his brother, European youth silver medallist Gary Sweeney.

In terms of team sport, there were 12 unsuccessful attempts to test competitors. One was in hockey, three were in soccer while eight of the teams were inter-county GAA sides, with one county having an issue twice.

“The missed tests in the teams are something we’ve been trying to address over a number of years,” noted Dr Una May, director of the Anti-Doping Unit at the Irish Sports Council. “In particular in the GAA, we introduced a sanction and they pay a fine if they miss a test. [That fine amounts to the cost of the test].

“We’ve addressed it to the best of our ability but there are always going to be problems and we recognise that, particularly with GAA.”