Synopses & Reviews
The scandals break monthly, even weekly—athletes caught doping in a multitude of sports, and around the world. The doping spotlight has been shone on Olympic athletes for years, and now professional sports, leagues, and athletes can no longer hide in the shadows either.
Leading the fight against doping in sports is Dick Pound, the chair of the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA). Controversial, outspoken, and reviled by those he seeks to expose and bring to account, Pound is the authority in the world on doping in sports.
According to Pound, doping is “one of the most important and difficult problems that sport will have to overcome in the future.” It goes to the core of the ideals that we hold about sport, our heroes, and what parents want for their children. No longer an issue that can be ignored by any country or any sport, doping is a growing problem, extending far beyond the world of sports to touch on much broader social issues.
Never shy of the issues or his critics, Pound takes on tough subjects in Inside Dope with his usual straight talk and candor, as well as a fiery passion for upholding the ideals of fair play in an intensely competitive environment.
Inside Dope tackles the issue of doping in sports: why it has become such a problem; the role of big business and drug companies; the complicity of coaches, doctors and trainers; testing and the battle to stay ahead of the users; WADA as the world’s watchdog; setting standards and the future of doping and sports.
At times damning, sometimes revealing, at others prescriptive, but always honest and outspoken, Inside Dope is an important contribution to the debate on performance-enhancing drugs in sport and gives a rare inside view on the business, the personalities, and the issues behind the greatest challenge facing the world of sports.
Synopsis
An IOC insider speaks out on creating a drug-free sports cultureWith doping charges leveled at athletes in baseball, cycling, and in the Olympics, cheating has, to many onlookers, become the norm in pro sports. With implications far beyond the sports arena, Inside Dope examines the genesis of doping in sports as well as in the world of doctors and trainers; drug testing and the battle to stay ahead of users; drug companies and big business; and the role of the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) as watchdog. Written by a former Olympian, an IOC official, and a passionate advocate of fair play in sports, this eye-opening book takes a candid look at testing standards and the future of doping and sports and the larger issue of how doping affects the public perception of athletes.
Synopsis
HOW DRUGS ARE THE BIGGEST THREAT TO SPORTSUnderstand this—doping in sport is almost never, I repeat, almost never accidental. It is almost always planned and deliberate. It is carried out with the specific intention of enhancing performance, knowing that it goes against the rules of sport and that it is dangerous to the health of the athlete.
WHY YOU SHOULD CARE
Do you want your children to be forced to become chemical stockpiles in order to be successful in sport, simply because of cheaters who are using drugs and who could not care less that they are compromising their whole sport?
AND WHAT CAN BE DONE ABOUT THEM
Doping is cheating, and there must be consequences for that. Serious penalties for doping will show that cheaters are not welcome and will act as a deterrent to discourage others from cheating. Doping in sport can be beaten. We just need to persevere. But like that old ’60s slogan states: “If you are not part of the solution, you are part of the problem.”
About the Author
Richard W. Pound is the founder and chair of the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA), an independent foundation created in 1999 to promote and coordinate the fight against doping in sport internationally. In 2005, he was named by TIME magazine as one of the TIME 100, the world’s 100 most influential people. TIME called “the relentless Dick Pound” the “prime mover in freeing the Olympic world from the taint of illicit, performance-enhancing drugs, and he isn’t going to stop until he has all the world’s sports in the tent.”
Pound has been a member of the International Olympic Committee (IOC) for over 25 years and has served as a member of the IOC Executive Board, vice-president, and acting president. He was also Chairman of the IOC Television Negotiation Committee (1983-2001), and Chairman of the IOC Marketing Committee until 2001, in the process making the IOC one of the most successful sport organizations in the world. He served as the Chair of the Coordination Commission for the 1996 Olympic Games, and as a director of the Organizing Committee for the 1988 Olympic Winter Games in Calgary, Alberta. It was partly because of Pound’s investigation of the Salt Lake City bribery scandal that new regulations and an ethics watchdog to oversee interaction between IOC members and bidding cities were created. He is a past president, director, and executive committee member of the Canadian Olympic Committee.
Born in Canada in 1942, Pound began his athletic career as a competitive swimmer. At the 1960 Olympic Games in Rome, he was a double Olympic finalist, finishing fourth in the 400 meter medley relay and sixth in the 100 meter freestyle. He went on to win four medals—a gold, a bronze, and two silvers—at the 1962 Commonwealth Games in Australia.
Pound was educated in Montreal, receiving degrees in commerce and law from McGill. He is currently a partner in the law firm Stikeman Elliott. In 1999, he was made the seventeenth chancellor of McGill University.
Table of Contents
Introduction. Who Cares?
Chapter 1. Rules Are Not Made to Be Ignored.
Chapter 2. Wining: At What Price?
Chapter 3. What Is Doping?
Chapter 4. Test Tube Athletes.
Chapter 5. Doping is Not an Accident.
Chapter 6. Testing: Games People Play.
Chapter 7. Why Do We Need to Regulate Doping?
Chapter 8. Playing Fair, and Willing to Prove It.
Chapter 9. Pro Sports I: Baseball, Football and Basketball.
Chapter 10. Pro Sports II: Hockey, Soccer, Golf and Other Sports.
Chapter 11. Drug Cartels and Drug Pushers in the Wide World of Sport.
Chapter 12. Gene Doping.
Chapter 13. See No Evil, Hear No Evil, Speak No Evil.
Chapter 14. Is There a Cure? My Ten-Step Program.
Afterword.
Index.