POSTED: October 14th 2011
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NEIL WILSON: Britain will defy WADA but where does the Olympic Charter stand?
THE NEIL WILSON COLUMN / An exclusive, authoritative series from Sports Features Communications
LONDON: The British Olympic Association is headed for a confrontation with the World Anti Doping Agency over its life-time ban on the selection of those who have served doping suspensions of more than six months.
Only 24 hours after the Court of Arbitration for Sport ruled that the Olympic Charter’s Rule 45 was invalid and unenforceable, WADA wrote to the British NOC asking it in light of the CAS ruling to put its bye law to the test. The British will refuse, saying there is nothing to test.
It is not saying that officially yet. It wants to reply to WADA privately before it publicly reveals the contents of its letter. But its attitude was apparent when Darryl Seibel, its American director of communications, told SportsFeatures.com: “Our position (since receiving WADA’s letter) is unchanged.”
The British NOC took great encouragement from the IOC’s own stated determination to propose a change to the WADA Code in 2013 which would make Rule 44 compatible but even more from the IOC’s Athletes Forum decision at a meeting in Colorado Springs to call for a lifetime Olympic ban on drug-takers.
It will also point out to WADA that Rule 28.4 of the Olympic Charter gives NOCs “exclusive authority for the representation of their respective countries at the Olympic Games”.
However, there is a qualifying clause in the Charter. No NOC shall associate itself “with any activity which would be in contradiction with the Olympic Charter”.
And the Olympic Charter Rule 44 states simply that the WADA Code is mandatory on the whole Olympic movement.
If the IOC Rule 45 on doping falls foul of the Code, so must the BOA’s similar byelaw. So which has precedent – Rule 28.4 giving NOC’s exclusive authority or Rule 44 making the WADA Code mandatory?
No athlete affected by the BOA ban can force it to judgement by CAS because CAS will accept cases only when both parties are willing to accept its jurisdiction. The BOA will not, in this case.
So the question will rest with WADA. Will it play hard-ball with the BOA, telling it to seek a CAS judgement or be ruled not in compliance.
How likely is that when the ultimate sanction would be the suspension of the British NOC by the IOC for non-compliance with the Code at a time when it is host NOC to next year’s Games? Hugely unlikely. Compromise is an Olympic discipline.
So the Olympic Movement has a stand-off. At least it does until 2013 when the IOC will try to persuade Governments and international sports federations to vote for a change in the Code to allow Rule 45.
I wish it well in that. The chances of governments who refused to accept the good sense of four year bans when the Code was written because they feared it would infringe domestic laws now agreeing to life-time bans is remote. This one will run and run.
NEIL WILSON reported his first Olympic Games in Munich in 1972. He has since covered another nine summer and nine winter Olympics for various newspapers, including The Independent and the Daily Mail with whom he has worked for the last 19 years as Athletics and Olympic correspondent. He was Britain's Sports Journalist of the Year in 1984 and is the author of seven books.
Keywords · British Olympic Association · World Anti Doping Agency · Neil Wilson · Darryl Seibel
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