COPENHAGEN (AP) — Tough anti-doping laws that allow police to raid and investigate people suspected of helping athletes to use performance enhancing drugs could become a new requirement for countries hoping to host the Olympic Games.
The value of such police powers was driven home to the International Olympic Committee by the winter games in Turin in 2006. Italian police raided the Austrian cross-country and biathlon team lodgings and seized a large amount of doping products and equipment.
IOC medical commission chairman Arne Ljungqvist says that the IOC's president, Jacques Rogge, has asked him to prepare a formal proposal that such laws become a requirement for bidding cities. Ljungqvist says the IOC executive can then quickly approve the requirement and it "absolutely" should be in place for cities bidding for the 2018 winter games.
"This is something that I feel should be a prerequisite for bidding cities, that countries do have these laws in place that makes it possible for public authorities and sport to work together, like we did in Italy," Ljungqvist said in an interview Monday with The Associated Press.
"The president (Rogge) said, 'I wholeheartedly support you. Please come with a note.' I will do that ... I will send a formal proposal," Ljungqvist said.
Such a requirement, if adopted, could bar some countries from bidding for the games or force them to change their laws so that police can conduct raids in investigating suspected doping offenses.
Ljungqvist said that for the Turin Olympics, the IOC received intelligence "that something suspicious might be going on" with the Austrians but couldn't act on it because "we have no authority to make a raid." So it passed the information to the Italian police, "and they came back to us and said 'Yes, this looks serious and we will make a raid."
Drug tests on the athletes came back negative but the raid netted what Ljungqvist called "a haematological laboratory, more or less, with all sorts of equipment and substances.".
"This was a very significant experience," said Ljungqvist. "The whole story would have remained unknown to everyone had the Italian law not been in place and had we not shared the information between ourselves."
"It would be dramatically negative for the host country if something happens, or if suspicions happen that cannot be pursued. It would look very bad," he added. "They have to have the law in place that supports their police authorities to do it ... because this will happen again."
Under existing British legislation, London might have been barred from bidding for the Olympics it will hold in 2012 — had such IOC requirements been in place when the British capital was selected as host in 2005. Currently, British police cannot raid people's homes for "a wide range of drugs" that are banned for athletes, British Olympic Association chairman Colin Moynihan told the AP.
He intends to introduce tougher, draft legislation into Britain's parliament.
"With the IOC giving such a strong steer of the importance of criminalizing the supply chain, we should bring this to parliament and discuss it in parliament, and so that is my intention," said Moynihan, a member of parliament's House of Lords.
"I would hope that by 2012 we did have world leading, state of the art legislation in place, particularly focused on the criminalization of the supply chain of drugs to athletes," he said.
