(ATR) IOC vice president Craig Reedie calls it "daunting" to take over as the next president of the World Anti-Doping Agency.
Reedie, a 72-year-old Scotsman, was selected over former IOC medical director Patrick Schamasch and Olympic hurdles gold medalist Edwin Moses at an IOC Executive Board meeting Friday in Moscow. Executive Board member C.K. Wu tells Around the Rings that the decision was unanimous.
Reedie says the volume of doping cases in the last eight weeks, including high-profile busts and the suspension of 31 Turkish athletes, has been dispiriting and led to a lot of finger-pointing. But he has been with WADA since its inception, has been treasurer and is an executive committee member.
"Having been doing a bit of this now for 14 years, it’s not something you walk away from," Reedie says. "I think I know the job that has to be done. You wake up in the morning and say, ‘OK, let’s get on with it.’"
Reedie will be put up for election at the World Conference on Doping in Sport in Johannesburg in November, but that is considered a formality since he is the IOC’s choice.
Reedie will succeed John Fahey, a former Australian state premier who has held the post since 2007, at the beginning of 2014.
The WADA presidency rotates between the sports world and governments.
The feeling among the EB members was that Reedie has been involved with WADA from the start, has seen all aspects of the operation and is the diplomat needed to smooth over strained relationships between different bodies.
"He was the most qualified and experienced of the candidates, having served on the WADA board for many years and always contributed," IOC vice president Thomas Bach tells Around the Rings. "So he knows WADA very well and all the aspects of the fight against doping."
Wu added, "Among the three of them, his qualifications are the most convincing."
Reedie is also a former president of the international badminton federation, former chairman of the British Olympic Association, and current chairman of the 2020 evaluation commission.
Reedie says he has a lot of time "to sit and think and try and work out exactly what I’m going to try to move forward.
"I don’t think there’s any one panacea."
But Reedie is already a supporter of the minimum four-year ban that the IAAF wants to implement.
"I hope that will come out of the (WADA) code consultation, which is underway at the moment," he says.
"The clear message from sport is that they wish four-year sanctions for serious offenses to become the norm, so I’m very comfortable with that."
He recognizes that some sports will fight the longer sanction. "Right from the word go, there has always been an issue of how you balanced one sport with another and how you try to harmonize sanctions in the main as well," he says.
While Fahey has said that the budget, reportedly $26 million, was insufficient, Reedie says it is difficult to ask for more funding from government and sports, which kick in equal amounts.
"I’ve looked after the money for the last 14 years and I think there’s been some skill in actually keeping the whole system together," Reedie says. "Governments are faced with substantial austerity measures at the moment. We have over the years managed to create a small fund of what I’ve always called unallocated cash, so we’ve been able to deal with any major troubles."
Putting the figure in perspective, he adds, "I’m sure any number of high-ranking sportsmen are earning rather more than the total of the WADA budget."
Reedie’s goal is to make anti-doping organizations around the world smarter, more effective and more successful.
While one school of thought says that WADA spends a lot of money in determining that 1.4 percent of the tests are positive, the other view is "we actually must be doing something right if we’re only finding that number," he says. "We’re helping to protect the clean athlete. And certainly from the IOC point of view, protection of the clean athlete is paramount, so we have to be smarter."
He adds that the "intelligent testing" program before the London Olympics, meant that "a fair number of athletes did not even appear in London."
Reedie also says the biological passport seems to be a mechanism that works, but a drawback is that collection of blood can be time-consuming and expensive.
He plans to confer with Schamasch, who sent him a note of congratulations, Moses, who is the chair of the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency, and especially with the next IOC president.
"This will have to be priority No. 1," says Reedie.
Written by Karen Rosen.
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