Australia's doping double standards continue
Greg Buckle
The credibility of Australian sport is suffering because of double standards over doping issues, The Australian newspaper said on Wednesday.
Commonwealth Games shooter Phillip Adams and Australian rugby union winger Ben Tune were both recently cleared to compete by national sporting bodies despite admitting accidental use of drugs banned by their respective sports.
"The Adams and Tune cases illustrate two things about Australian sport," the newspaper said in a back-page column.
"Australian athletes appear mostly indifferent to drug protocol and the nation has no sense of justice when it comes to other international athletes who are found to be in breach of drug rules.
"Speak with an accent and you are automatically up to your biceps in syringes. Australians, however, are innocent victims."
An Australian Shooting Association tribunal cleared Adams to compete in the Manchester Games in July after ruling he had taken a banned diuretic to treat high blood pressure.
The International Shooting Federation also cleared him.
"This is not just an in-house whitewashing process. I'd like to think it's never that case in Australia," Australian team doctor Peter Fricker said at the time.
An independent Australian Rugby Union (ARU) anti-doping tribunal ruled on Monday that Tune would not be penalised despite being prescribed the banned drug probenecid to treat a knee infection last year.
Tune played two games for Queensland before the mistake was discovered and he missed the next four matches while traces of the drug left his system.
SECRECY
The issue was kept secret by Australian rugby officials who did not inform the game's ruling body, the International Rugby Board (IRB), until it was revealed in a newspaper on July 23.
A member of the IRB anti-doping advisory committee has urged the IRB to ban Tune for a minimum of two years, meaning he would miss next year's World Cup defence on home soil.
Tune, who is in Australia's squad for Saturday's Tri-nations rugby test against South Africa, escaped a ban when the ARU tribunal ruled he had been administered the drug for therapeutic rather than performance-enhancing reasons.
Australian Sports Drug Agency (ASDA) chief executive John Mendoza said international sporting bodies could play a greater role in setting parameters for national anti-doping tribunals.
"I think what fuels public concern and media comment over the Adams and Tune cases being labelled as double standards is we have different sports doping policies covering different sports," Mendoza told Reuters on Wednesday.
"The IRB does not have a therapeutic approvals process.
"If Ben Tune was a rugby league player, the case of probenecid would have gone through therapeutic use approval and would have stopped there.
"Tune had a very serious (knee) infection."
BOOKMAKER SCANDAL
The Australian newspaper also said the decision by the Australian Cricket Board (ACB) to secretly fine Mark Waugh and Shane Warne for dealing with an illegal bookmaker in 1994 was another example of how badly Australian sports officials handled controversy.
The ACB revealed the fines in 1998.
"The cover-up got out," The Australian said of the Waugh-Warne affair.
"...Sport is only as good as its officials. In Australia, that's a cause for concern."
