Pounding the steroids issue

November 28, 2005 7:56 PM by S.M. Oliva | Other posts by S.M. Oliva | Comments (4)

Dick Pound, a longtime Canadian Olympic official and current head of the World Anti-Doping Agency, recently claimed that one-third of National Hockey League players have taken “illegal� performance enhancing drugs. There doesn't appear to be any evidence to support this claim, and ESPN.com hockey writer Scott Burnside says Pound is jeopardizing WADA's credibility:

The comments are ludicrous.

After all, who will take WADA's claims of problems in hockey or other sports seriously if it turns out Pound pulled his "one-third" number out of thin air? And given the data that is available, data that suggests there is nowhere near that level of abuse amongst NHLers, it appears that's exactly where Pound's numbers come from.

Calls made by ESPN.com to WADA have not yet been returned.

Although the president of the International Ice Hockey Federation Rene Fasel would not comment directly, the IIHF told ESPN.com the IIHF supports WADA's guidelines and tests according to WADA protocols at its events.

Since 1994, albeit early in the dope-testing game, "well over 3,000" tests have been conducted at IIHF events, including Olympics and World Championships, and there have been eight positive tests, a rate of approximately 0.2 percent.

During the 2003-04 season, the National Hockey League Players' Association conducted tests on virtually every player in the league as an educational dry run to prepare for what everyone expected would be a new policy on drug testing. Less than 1 percent, or fewer than seven players, tested positive.

NHL deputy commissioner Bill Daly said three NHLers have tested positive over the past 15 years at international events, one involving a painkiller used for an "acute" injury, another involved "therapeutic use" for an existing health condition which was later excused and the third was "mistaken use."

"Pound's claims are utterly baseless," Daly said.

So what would motivate Pound to make a baseless attack on the NHL? One explanation is that Pound is trying to keep the steroids hysteria alive in the wake of Major League Baseball's recent crackdown. Baseball's newly-announced policy has stalled, at least temporarily, legislation in the U.S. Congress to impose uniform drug-testing and punishment standards on all sports leagues.

If you're Dick Pound, this is bad news, because the anti-steroids legislation under consideration would give WADA quasi-governmental powers. H.R. 3084, the bill passed by a House committee in September, would give the WADA legal authority to decide what substances are banned in U.S. sports leagues. (The Secretary of Commerce would be able to add substances to the banned list.) Thus, WADA would enjoy a de facto monopoly in steroid regulation, usurping the right of privately-owned sports leagues to make their own determinations about what substances are harmful to players and competition.

Having lost baseball as a target, Pound is turning against the NHL in a desperate attempt to maintain the political frenzy over a cause that, by most accounts, has not enraged the general public. Rather then allow the market to act, Pound is spreading false information in an effort to create the illusion of “market failure.� He may succeed in getting Congress to act—after all, the modern welfare state was built on these illusions—but hopefully, the hockey-going public won't accept Pound's accusations without insisting on even a minimal level of proof.