Skiers will risk criminal prosecution for doping in Torino

Skiers will risk criminal prosecution for doping in Torino{mosimage}Skiers may run the risk of criminal prosecution if they get caught in an anti-doping snare at the upcoming Olympic Winter Games in Torino.

On Friday the International Olympic Committee conceded that it was unable to convince the Italian government to suspend a particularly tough anti-doping law that makes arrests, raids, jail and courtrooms a possibility for offenders.

The IOC had wanted its own anti-doping regulations, which parallel the code of the World Anti-Doping Agency, to take supremacy during the Games.

‘The IOC and WADA have tried for many months to convince the Italians to impose a moratorium’ said Gian Franco Kasper, addressing the issue last week in Soelden, Austria, at the alpine World Cup opener.

‘This is not easy’ said Kasper, who is also on the WADA executive board. ‘The public will say, ‘See we have strong drug laws except for athletes, who can do whatever they want.”

At issue is law No. 376 of the year 2000, which applies jail sentences for dopers and their accomplices. It has enabled Italian prosecutors to raid or investigate athlete housing.

Skiers are reacting in different ways to the issue. ‘Why such concern and care for those who dope and cheat’ asked Canadian cross-country skier Beckie Scott earlier this week in a Toronto Star article.

Scott, who is on the athletes’ commission for WADA, won the gold medal the five-kilometer pursuit in Salt Lake City, but only two years after the event, when the two skiers who beat her were penalized for doping.

But Pernilla Wiberg, the Swedish skier who won the overall alpine World Cup title in 1997, says athletes have told her they are concerned about the law.

‘That they would grab you and put you in jail, that is the fear of the athletes, definitely’ said Wiberg, who is on the athletes’ commission of the IOC. ‘To be put in jail in a foreign country, it is for me a little bit crazy.’

WADA chairman Dick Pound raised the possibility that specific athletes could be sabotaged. ‘Somebody wants to put him off his game, so they call the Turin police’ said Pound, describing a ‘nightmare scenario’ of an athlete’s quarters being raided and the athlete spending time answering questions in a jail the night before their event.

The Italian government is steadfast in supporting the law, as is the head of Italy’s national Olympic committee. Some officials have said that athletes may stay home from the Games (which begin Feb. 10) for fear of Italy’s hardnosed authorities.