Good idea? What if marathons/races required agents to pay back the percent of money they earned from dirty athletes?

That would open a Pandora's box of legal issues. You would have the WMM signing contracts with agents. No other professional sport has an agent sign a contract to return a commission if athlete gets caught doping. What is next, signing agents to exclusive representative deals with the WMM? The agents work for the athletes. If Jeptoo or anyone else gets caught, and has to forfeit prize money, appearance fees, than they need to recoup what they paid the agent out of the prize money, etc. in order to give it back to the race organizer. That is between the athlete and agent. If the agent won't return it, too bad on the athlete. After all they were the one caught cheating.

In theory this could be a good idea, requiring the agents to return their fee, but only if it can be shown they knew the athlete in question is dirty. Some of these agents work very hard and a few may legitimately not know if one or more of their clients are doping until the client gets caught. Of course others know, facilitate it, or just ignore it as well. However getting the agents to agree with this is unlikely and would be an interesting legal battle if the WMM tried to enforce it. I think that is why Griak made his comments.

1) No you don't make the agents sign exclusive deals with WMM. You have the athlete sign a deal with the WMM. You can even have them designate how much of their $ they agent gets.

2) The agent then signs a deal saying they will pay the WMM this money back if the athlete tests positive and does not return all the money they received.

3) If the agents doesn't honor #2, then the WMM never works with them again. With the current system the agents have all the incentive in the world to sign up dirty athletes and not care if they get busted down the road.

4) I don't see why it needs to be proven that the agent knew about the doping. They agents received proceeds from money that is essentially dirty. I'm sure there are legitimate agents who would have no problem signing this type of deal. Fine put a 2 year window on it if you want. If I was an athlete and my agent wins Boston in two weeks and got paid out and I took my 20% and then 6 months later it was found out they were on EPO, I wouldn't have a problem returning that money.

Sure it creates some pressure on the agents but I don't see how it's not legal.

Or maybe the race withholds 20% of the money for 2 years. Pays the athlete their 80% (which they keep all of) and agent gets paid out in 2 years. Sure that's not great for cashflow for existing agents, but currently they have no incentive to work with clean athletes.

Did you think of calling any agents and asking if they would be willing to sign such a contract? What about coaches? Do you think Renato would sign such an agreement?

You still haven't stated your case why the agent is responsible?

1) Now you idea is effecting the contractual relationship between the agent and athlete. The WMM has no business telling athletes what cut of their appearance fee/prize money they can or should give to their agents.

2)Again, it is on the athlete if they fail the drug test and not the agent, unless you can prove the agent was complicit in it, supporting it, or even required their athlete to do this. This is entirely unnecessary anyway as the WMM can contractually go after the athlete to recoup their money. The athlete can always go after the agent to get the commission back, but if the agent is an innocent party, the athlete will lose. The athlete won't be able to recoup legitimate fees paid to their agent because they got caught cheating.

3) The WMM can already refuse to work with any agents they choose. If an agent is suspected of having their athletes dope, being complicit in it, or blatantly ignoring it, the races can refuse to work with them and their clients. If the WMM choose to continue to bring in athletes represented by agents who have had multiple clients busted for doping, it is on the WMM.

4) By showing the agent knew or should have known the athlete is dirty, you have a stronger legal case to recover funds. If the agent is entirely innocent, worked and earned the money, why should they lose it? The athlete is the one paid and if the athlete commits the offense, the athlete should forfeit the money.

Withholding the money for two years is absurd. Asking agents to wait on tens of thousands of dollars for two years while this system would be implemented won't work. The WMM has no incentive to try this and the agents would never agree to it. The WMM can already refuse to work with agents who continually have clients fail doping tests. I never argued what you proposed was per se illegal, but it most definitely interpheres with the athlete/agent contractual relationship and could be civilly litigated.

integrityunit is looking to expand and make itself more money, make itself bigger.

you don't have control over these far fetched do gooders.

with their sick agenda to get into the shorts of every runner to take a urine sample.

that's what you're asking for.

george orwell and the weird officials to be knocking on your door, demanding to know your where abouts at all times.

better scrap your stupid freedom killing sick doping program.

intregity my arseehole.

Not logical wrote:

You still haven't stated your case why the agent is responsible?

I never said the agent was responsible. However this would create some incentive for agents to try and make sure their athletes were not dirty. Now they have no icentive to do this.

For example, if I was coaching or the agent of Kelsey Bruce I would have no problem signing such a contract. It would be me vouching she was clean. If she tested positive I would feel I received dirty money and would gladly return it to the race.

With the 1MDB scandal, Jho Lo gave millions of $ in jewelry to his girlfriend Miranda Kerr. When she found out the money was dirty money she gave the money back to the feds.

I don't think it's a stretch to say the Rosas have made hundreds of thousands of dollars off of runners who were eventually proven to be cheats. Even if they only received their cut from races where the athlete was DQd it would not be an insignificant sum.

If this started with Paula Radcliffe, she was banned immediately and her records removed then yes.

Otherwise no, because what you're suggesting is just a bunch of BS political hogwash.

Whoa....are you trying to lose a mod?

wejo wrote:

Not logical wrote:

You still haven't stated your case why the agent is responsible?

I never said the agent was responsible.

Why would the agent not be responsible? They are facilitating the entry of a doper into a race, damaging the race's reputation, which can result in financial damage beyond the lost prize or comp money. Without them, the doper doesn't enter the race and the damage doesn't happen. Who else is responsible but the one who makes it happen?

Responsible doesn't necessarily mean "knowingly," as in they know their clients are doped. But they do know that their athletes might be dopers, and that they are passing on that inherent risk to the races their athletes enter. No innocence in that, and it's not unreasonable for the races to demand that risk be mitigated before they close the deal.

If the agents refuse, it's because they would make less money, not lose money. And the races won't force the issue because they still make more money from dopers than clean athletes. A lot more dopers would have to be caught for that to change.

Your problem here is you assume doping athletes and their agents possess the same value system and morality as yourself and Miranda Kerr. If only it were so. (Btw, they are the Jho Low equivalents in your analogy) The basic problem here is you are trying to fix a problem that apparently nobody in positions of power in the sport of running wants fixed. Otherwise, Rosa would already be banned from the sport and runners found guilty would still not be able to run after their suspensions until every dime of their illegal winnings (including the agent cut) was forfeited. The rules are there, they just aren’t being enforced. As with virtually every other sport, the so-called leaders equate drug enforcement with negative PR which they fear will lead to a diminished brand and reduced corporate sponsorship and advertising money, so it all gets swept under the rug.

To answer the question in the title: No, this is a bad idea. Not because it isn't trying to accomplish an admirable goal (making sure agents and managers have skin in the game in making sure the sport is clean), but because it's a blunt instrument ill-designed to accomplish that goal.

If you're an agent, you are representing an athlete who you may not know is doping.

If however you've represented a number of athletes with a history of doping, you should face penalties.

More thoughts:

1. The accusations and suspicions of PED's in the world of athletics (and obviously PED use has been proven to exist in many sports) are too much for me. When I see an article on a doper, it's usually not something I'm very interested in reading.

2. Doping exists because when there are finances on the line, some people will do absolutely anything to attain them.

This is obvious. If someone in country 'a' does it clean, they may have an entirely different perspective on life than

someone in country 'b'. Perhaps they both come from the same country. Who knows.

3. I support doping testing at major competitions where money is on the line. And of course at the Olympics.

I am not an international athlete and have very limited experience at competitions beyond the

provincial level in Canada. I've never competed in events where I'd be tested, in other words.

So this stuff doesn't really interest me too much because I am not running world level times. Not yet at least.

I can't think about this stuff right now. Hope what I've said helped.

What if agent was on drugs , but the athlete wasn't?

This is exactly right. There already exists a clause that is in every single doping sanction which states that the athlete "forfeits all medals, points, and prizes between xxx date and xxx date". This is clear and unambiguous language. However, as the Riot points out, it's rarely enforced. I know of exactly two dopers who actually paid back winnings after being sanctioned. Yet there are dozens of dopers out there who serve the *time* of their sanction, then come back and start racing again. Hello, they have yet to fulfill ALL the requirements of their sanction. It's ridiculous and needs to be enforced. Now, to brojos point, I think it's entirely enforceable, as that money is already supposed to come back to the race. If the agents wants to sue the athlete because the agent *should* have made his/her 10/15/20% of the supposed winnings, that's for a different court case but the fact is there is little difference between a bank robber paying the getaway driver 10% of the "winnings" and an epo'd athlete paying the agent 10% of the winnings. Either way it's fraudulently obtained, and should be returned, by force if necessary. Also, I guarantee that Dan Lilot would sign on to an agreement like this. I can also think of a couple other agents who would likely do so (Hawi comes to mind).

The Riot wrote:

The rules are there, they just aren’t being enforced...

Why not just make the sport strictly amateur again? - doping would be reduced, crooked agents would be flushed away, and we would get more Ron Hill's and Kawauchi's - what would be not to like if the sport became like this?

Because it would just push us back to the times where elite athletes were having fake government sponsored jobs and be trained and doped by corrupt government-backed teams?

Because doping (although the less clever variation of it) is just as prevalent in amateur sports as in professional sport?