HPSNZ boss: Keep up the fight against drugs

Athletics is in another doping crisis. Photo / Getty

Alex Baumann, the man charged with running New Zealand's high-performance sports programme, said the recent doping revelations in athletics is further evidence authorities cannot give up the fight against performance enhancing drugs.

The two-time Olympic gold medallist can offer New Zealanders a unique perspective on the allegations, having lived through the Ben Johnson scandal as his own career was winding down.

"I'm been through it a number of times, in Canada with the Ben Johnson scandal, and Charlie Francis and his whole group of athletes being on performance-enhancing drugs," Baumann said of the news that up to one-third of of medals in endurance events at the Olympics and World Championships since 2001 were won by those recording suspicious blood tests, with none stripped of medals.

"I knew Ben fairly well. The interesting thing was behind the scenes everyone felt that he was on something but he never tested positive. The stories were he was bench pressing 430 pounds and squatting 680 pounds. There were always these kinds of rumours.

"Obviously there was systemic use in East Germany but in the end it's my feeling that we can't give up the fight. There's been good progress made but there's still a lot more to do in this area.

While the short-term benefits of doping are often found in positive medal counts, Baumann said the long-term effects of the Johnson scandal were devastating.

"It had a tremendous effect on Canadian sport post-1988. An inquiry was set up and in many respects Canadian sport lost its way up until the early-2000s. Post-Ben Johnson, winning was a dirty word and I certainly believe you can't have a win-at-all-costs mentality."

The drugs scandal surrounding Ben Johnson was devastating.

Data obtained by Britain's Sunday Times and German broadcaster ARD/WDR applied to 12,000 blood tests from 5000 athletes. More than 800 athletes, one in seven, recorded tests that were abnormal or highly suggestive of doping.

At the London Olympics, 10 medals in track and field were considered suspicious and in some finals, every medallist recorded suspicious results, which pointed to the increasing use of blood transfusions and EPO micro-dosing.

Wada, the world anti-doping authority, have said they are alarmed by the findings and Baumann said HPSNZ was "very concerned".

"We have to continue to push for clean sport. Having said that, there'll always be cases where it's not so clean," Baumann said. "It's up to the international organisations like Wada, and national organisations like Drug Free Sport and national federations have to have the commitment to actually do something about it.

"It's trying to get that commitment worldwide."

A 2013 review found there was no evidence of systemic doping behaviour in New Zealand sport, "which was pleasing, but I don't think we can put our head in the sand and say there may not be incidences out there".

Baumann believed that unannounced, out-of-competition testing remained the key tool in the fight against cheats.