British Daily Telegraph article.
Dick Pound accuses Juan Antonio Samaranch
By David Bond
Last Updated: 2:29am BST 25/10/2007
The outgoing World Anti-Doping Agency president, Dick Pound, has accused former International Olympic Committee president Juan Antonio Samaranch of failing to take enough notice of the threat of drugs in sport.
Juan Antonio Samaranch
Fingered: former IOC president Juan Antonio Samaranch in Athens
Pound, who stands down from his WADA role next month, yesterday claimed that Samaranch showed no interest in putting pressure on the Olympic sports to tackle doping during his two decades in charge of the IOC.
"Samaranch wasn't interested in the issue," Pound claimed. "There was no money available for research and Samaranch wasn't interested in using the Olympic leverage against the international federations to make them do their job. He was never willing to do that."
With the IOC still reeling from Marion Jones's recent admission that she used banned steroids in the run-up to her five-medal haul at the 2000 Sydney Games, Pound's claims come at a sensitive time.
Samaranch, who took over as IOC chief in 1980, is credited with turning the then lagging fortunes of the Olympic movement around and creating a hugely popular and commercially successful product with the summer and winter Games.
But Pound said it was not until the 1998 Festina cycling team scandal at the Tour de France, where officials found a carload of performance-enhancing drugs, that Samaranch and the IOC began to take notice.
Pound added: "I think we would have went on like that for a long time if it hadn't been for the Festina fiasco.
"I told him [Samaranch], we are now in a position where nobody believes the IOC any more."
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