IOC step up assault on drug abuse

Juan Antonio Samaranch, President of the International Olympic Committee (IOC), has reached an agreement with the White House's anti-drugs chief Barry McCaffrey to work together in the newly established Anti-doping agency.

Juan Antonio Samaranch, President of the International Olympic Committee (IOC), has reached an agreement with the White House's anti-drugs chief Barry McCaffrey to work together in the newly established Anti-doping agency.

The 79-year-old former Spanish diplomat, whose main purpose for his visit is to appear before the House Commerce Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigation, met with McCaffrey for more than an hour before both men issued a joint statement detailing 12 points and 17 subjects on which they would be co-operating.

These included developing drugs detection techniques, more transparency in the procedures and the participation of an athlete, who would be elected by his or her fellow peers.

Samaranch only decided to come to the United States late last week after he reached an agreement with the US Justice Department, who are investigating the Salt Lake City gifts-for-votes scandal, that he would not be indicted.

He claimed that the creation of the grandly named World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) was the result of years of battling against drugs in sport.

"We have been fighting against doping for a long long time, but we realised that we needed the help and support of the governments, for this reason we decided to create this anti-doping world agency," said Samaranch.

"50 per cent from the world of sports and 50 per cent collaboration from the governments. I think that WADA will be very important and very useful for the fight in the future against doping."

Samaranch was accompanied to the meeting by among others IOC vice-president Dick Pound, who has been appointed chief of WADA - although the urbane Canadian lawyer says he will only head the Lausanne-based agency for a year.

Latest figures show that the IOC carried out over 105,000 dope tests in 1998, nearly half of them in out of competition testing. Only 1,926 were positive.

The most tested were athletes with 14,954 followed by cyclists with 10,458 tests and footballers 9,029.

The IOC has also given over one million dollars to researchers trying to develop a foolproof way to catch athletes taking the banned drug EPO.