Sport: Dempsey overshadows Todd for Swiss

Charlie Dempsey 5, Mark Todd 0. That is the score of interest in New Zealand that sports lawyer David Howman experienced during five days in Lausanne, Switzerland.

Howman, who was attending a meeting of the World Anti-Doping Agency, where he chaired its legal committee, said that each day of the five days he was there Dempsey was featured in the newspapers for his abstention in the soccer World Cup venue vote.

"Charlie Dempsey has created more impact as a New Zealander than anything I have ever seen before," he said in Sydney yesterday on his way home.

"I had people coming up to me all the time saying that I must be ashamed to be a New Zealander. There was never any mention that he was Oceania's representative, just New Zealand.

"There was nothing about Mark Todd at all," he said of the drugs controversy surrounding the equestrian star.

Howman has been appointed deputy chairman of the independent observer group which will oversee the International Olympic Committee medical commission's handling of drug-testing at the Sydney Games.

He said news that the IOC had adopted a urine test as well as a blood test, subject to final legal approval, to test for the sports hormone erythropoietin (EPO) was another step towards making sport drug-free.

The observer group would be in Australia from September 2 to October 1, when the IOC would conduct its 400 out-of-competition, pre-Games random drug tests.

EPO boosts an athlete's red blood cell count, which raises the blood's ability to transport oxygen to the muscles, thereby increasing muscle performance and improving stamina. It is believed to be widely used in distance running, swimming and cycling.

In the past IOC experts have felt that no test could directly prove the presence of ERO. But they decided yesterday that a combination of Australian and French tests could detect it with sufficient certainty to overcome legal challenges.

- NZPA