After the extreme stress test of a years-long Russian doping scandal, the World Anti-Doping Agency will get a new leader this year while still rebuilding trust with athletes.
The six-year presidency of IOC member Craig Reedie began with the steroid-tainted Sochi Olympics and will end in November with likely dozens of Russian doping cases unresolved in the ongoing fallout.
“This has been a complicated period,” Reedie acknowledged Wednesday on the sidelines of WADA’s annual hosting of anti-doping experts in the Olympic family’s home city.
WADA has been hit from all sides during what the Scottish official described as “one of the biggest political stand-offs in world political affairs” of recent years.
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Still, Reedie believes he hands over an organisation that “comes out of it with very substantial credit, and if some of that bounces back on me then I will be happy to take it.”
The next WADA president will be picked by the public authorities, which jointly fund the global anti-doping watchdog, and take turns holding the presidency with the Olympic movement.
Europe nominated Poland’s sports minister, Witold Banka, and the Americas proposed Marcos Diaz of the Dominican Republic. Both former athletes are members of WADA’s executive committee.
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A third candidate is Linda Helleland, the WADA vice president and its most vocal critic of Russia. The Norwegian lawmaker remains in the race without a formal nomination.
All three candidates were at the WADA conference Wednesday, though no campaign event was held with key stakeholders from laboratories, anti-doping agencies, athlete groups and sports governing bodies.
Reedie would not speculate on how the job has evolved in his time, but added: “I am sure a new president will have his own priorities.”
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