KEY POINTS:
Cycling is paying the price for allowing a "culture of doping" to develop, World Anti-Doping Agency chairman Dick Pound said yesterday after Floyd Landis was told he would forfeit his 2006 Tour de France win.
"It's safe to say they [the International Cycling Union] understand now how serious
the problem is and the question is whether they will be able to put a sufficiently robust programme in place to deal with the issue," Pound said.
"We have never said that doping in sport is limited to cycling but I have said that it is a particularly serious problem in cycling and that the leadership in cycling over the past decade has allowed what is a real culture of doping in the sport to develop and it is coming home to roost now."
American Landis was banned for two years and stripped of his 2006 tour title yesterday after a US arbitration panel found him guilty of taking the banned male hormone testosterone.
Pound, who will hand over the Wada reins at the end of the year, questioned whether golf and baseball were doing enough in the fight to curb the use of performance-enhancing drugs.
Leading golf organisations outlined an anti-doping policy for the sport yesterday which will take effect from 2008, but Pound questioned their decision to create their own list of banned substances and sanctions rather than adopt the world anti-doping code.
"Quite a lot of progress had been made because even two to three months ago the PGA was denying that there was a problem or there would ever be one," Pound said as he prepared to preside over his final Wada executive committee meeting this weekend in Montreal.
"But it's very disappointing to us they would not use the list that has been developed under the code.
"My question to golf would be: is there anything on the list under the world anti-doping code that you think your players should be able to take?
"If there is then golf should indicate what they think their athletes should be able to take that the rest of athletes around the world can't."
Pound challenged Major League Baseball (MLB) to reveal the names of players who have been linked to an investigation into the sale of performance-enhancing drugs over the internet.
"It's disappointing to us that Major League Baseball has made such a concerted and expensive effort to keep players' names who have been involved in this confidential," he said. "It's becoming increasingly clear that the problem is serious and widespread."
- Reuters