POSTED: November 18th 2008
NewsUpdate
Cram stands up for WADA
KEIR RADNEDGE / Sports Features Communications
LONDON: Steve Cram, one of Britain’s finest-ever middle-distance runners, has come out four-square behind the World Anti-Doping Agency’s 'whereabouts' testing strategy.
Cram, former 1500 metres world champion and silver medallist at the 1984 Olympic Games in Los Angeles, was responding to concerns raised by the English footballers’ union at an upgrading of the domestic testing system.
UK Sport adminsters doping controls on behalf of the Football Association and intends to launch the one-hour-a-day notification format for an identified group of 30 elite players from next July.
“Invasion of privacy” issues had been raised, in response, by Gordon Taylor, chief executive of the Professional Footballers’ Association. However Cram, writing in The Guardian, said: “The PFA should be 100 per cent behind the proposals."
He added: "FIFA has at least agreed to the principle [of random testing] and its implementation should not be difficult for the FA to administer. It might be an imposition but it is wholly unacceptable for the players’ union to resist what would, at worst, be what [Manchester United manager] Sir Alex Ferguson called a ‘nuisance.’”
Cram, suggesting that 2016 bid sports rugby union and golf still had “to catch up with current attitudes to drug testing,” urged the footballers’ union to play a strong leading role in the fight against doping in sport. Instead, he said: “The PFA and its counterparts have come out as overprotective and out of touch.”
Keywords · Steve Cram · World Anti-Doping Agency · UK Sport · Football Association · Gordon Taylor · Professional Footballers’ Association
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