Olympic leader calls for sweeping changes in fight against doping

With the global sports scene embroiled in a doping controversy, the leader of the International Olympic Committee is pressing for significant changes in the fight to detect cheaters.

IOC President Thomas Bach wants to give the World Anti-Doping Agency more authority and investigative resources. He would also like to see another international body, the Court of Arbitration for Sport, handle all penalties and bans.

“We are convinced that the adoption of these proposals would lead to a more efficient, more transparent, more streamlined, more cost efficient, more harmonized anti-doping system,” Bach was quoted as saying by the Associated Press on Friday. “It would better protect the clean athletes and enhance the credibility of sports.”

At present, doping control is a mishmash affair, with each nation largely responsible for monitoring its own athletes. Under Bach’s proposal, which grew out of a recent Olympic summit, national federations would instead fund the World Anti-Doping Agency to conduct testing.

The agency would also receive money for an investigative unit. And the Court of Arbitration for Sport, which currently hears appeals, would streamline the process by adjudicating cases from the start.

Bach made his comments to a gathering of the European Olympic Committees in the wake of troubling developments.

The international track federation’s former president, Lamine Diack, is facing criminal charges that he solicited bribes to suppress positive test results. And a recent World Anti-Doping Agency report alleged systemic doping among track athletes in Russia.

That country’s track federation has been provisionally suspended, meaning its athletes cannot enter international competitions, including the upcoming 2016 Summer Olympics.

At Friday’s assembly in Prague, Czech Republic, Bach said Russian officials had taken significant steps toward gaining reinstatement in time to participate in the Games.

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