BASEL, Switzerland, 12 November 2003 — The compulsory two-year ban for a doping offense, which is part of the global anti-doping code of the World Anti-Doping Agency, WADA, could be replaced by a system where offenses are looked at on a case-by-case basis by the 2004 Olympics.
News of a possible relaxation of the two-year rule came at a conference in Basel yesterday where WADA presented a paper to medical representatives of sports bodies involved in Olympic team events.
The move comes as a surprise as WADA had insisted on the set ban only last March when the global anti-doping code was agreed by over 1000 delegates representing sports organizations and 73 national governments in Copenhagen.
Despite reservations being expressed by the Cycling Federation, UCI, and football’s ruling body, FIFA, the new 53-page code was passed unanimously.
However, since then Graf-Baumann has carried out a study of 184 doping cases that arose between 1998 and 2002 and found that variable penalties, from a verbal warning to a four-year ban, were imposed.
“The conclusion was that individual cases and their punishment by the sporting bodies’ disciplinary committees took place in the same way as a criminal case in a constitutional state,” said the German.
