Graham Kelly: Caborn's stick smacks of totalitarian regime

Richard Caborn, the Minister for Sport, is wielding a very big stick indeed when he threatens the Football Association with the withdrawal of £20m per year in public funding if it does not toughen its stance against alleged drug cheats, a sanction which, if implemented, would hit cash-strapped Football League clubs' youth development programmes more than any other area of the game.

The threat is outrageously premature. The World Anti-Doping Agency code, to which Caborn committed the Government in Copenhagen in March, obliges him to introduce the global anti-doping programme in four stages leading up to next year's Olympic Games in Athens in consultation with sports governing bodies. No more, no less. He knows very well that the code is only a memorandum of understanding, not a legal instrument that can jeopardise an individual performer's right to earn a living, particularly when performers may not be completely apprised of the full implications beforehand.

Caborn's threats to football, a sport which has always co-operated to the full with UK Sport's drug-free sport policy, smack of a totalitarian regime. First the FA was castigated for refusing to "name and shame" a nandrolone offender, now the financial stick is being branded.

The Nationwide League player who tested positive for nandrolone last October was let off by the FA with a warning that he faced a permanent suspension if he should offend again.

The FA disciplinary commission appears to have reached the right result, or at least, a sympathetic verdict provided the player avoids further problems which could, of course, terminate his career, by doubtful means: he pleaded that, as he was undergoing a course of fertility treatment, any major punishment could have serious repercussions for his wife who was suffering from depression. They concluded that the nandrolone positive was caused by being ingested in a health supplement.

The continuing purported ignorance about nandrolone is staggering. Why is it not yet accepted that, in addition to being an anabolic steroid (nandrolone decanoate), nandrolone is a hormone which is produced naturally in the body? The hormone can result from an arduous training session, or may follow a slight injury as the soft tissue repairs; conversely, the administration of even a full dose of 50 million nanograms of nandrolone decanoate, according to the doctors' prescribing bible, the British National Formulary, would not enhance performance.

It is ludicrous that the International Olympic Committee's list of prohibited drugs used by virtually all sports bodies and adopted by WADA has never distinguished between the two forms of nandrolone, since the advent of high-resolution analysis equipment in the 1990s led to an explosion in the number of positive samples.

The WADA is now canvassing applications for research projects in the field of anti-doping. Its president Richard Pound, in inviting applications, said: "We have to secure worthwhile research projects and further our understanding of how doping affects athletes and how we can better detect compounds." This is classic Mad Hatter's Tea Party stuff to which Caborn wants to bind us.

"Would you care for some more tea?" Alice replies: "I can't have any more when I haven't had any yet." On nandrolone there has never been any reputable research published by the IOC, yet sportsmen's livelihoods are repeatedly jeopardised by spurious positives.

At least football's world governing body, Fifa, made clear its reservations about the WADA code at the Copenhagen conference, particularly in so far as the statutory two-year suspensions were concerned. Jim Dvorak, of the Fifa medical committee, pointed out that young players' careers should not be put at such risk of effective termination while they were still minors. The IOC's policy that a sports person must accept "strict liability" for what is found in a body sample is the exact opposite of how real lawyers use the term.

Appearing before the Court of Arbitration for Sport in Lausanne over the weekend has been 35-year-old Anissa Tann, the Australian women's football captain, who, prior to testing positive for nandrolone before appearing for New South Wales against Queensland in her National League grand final on 14 December last year, was due to lead her country to her third World Cup in September. I believe there is a real possibility her lawyers will quite rightly have this charge thrown out. If that happens, the WADA will have no option but to come clean and accept that "drug-free sport", Richard Caborn's mantra, is bunkum.

Sport's leaders have capitalised on the climate of fear, ignorance and innuendo. They must all abide by international law, accept that performers are innocent until proven guilty, and establish, with the medical profession, an independent organisation to issue "Licences to Compete" so that doctors, not the IOC, take responsibility for the well-being of top class participants.

grahamkelly@btinternet.com