Jul 23, 2008, 5:06 GMT
Lausanne, Switzerland -
dpa: Ekaterini Thanou is on the provisional list for the Greek team. Should she be allowed to go to Beijing?
Rogge: We are continuing the investigation. We will study this case most likely in Beijing with the executive board and Thomas (Bach) will make a recommendation. And then the executive board will take a decision. When Thanou handed over her accreditation she was no more an Olympic athlete so there was no way for us to act any further in terms of disqualification. But we said at that time that we would review the eligibility for Beijing. So if the Greek Olympic Committee enters Thanou in Beijing we will study the eligibility. We have the right to do that.
dpa: A new Danish study allegedly says that EPO tests are unreliable. What does that mean for the Olympics, and WADA?
Rogge: I heard about it and discussed it with the people of WADA. They are going to look into the matter. They have asked for more information and background data from the Danish examiners. If there are weaknesses in the WADA accreditation system then they will be adressed.
dpa: people are not talking how great it is to have 41-year-old mother Dana Torres going to her fifth Olympics, they speak about doping. The same for Tyson Gay. Does that show a lack of credibility for high-performance sport?
Rogge: There is this very unfair situation that is created by the athletes themselves; that every big performance is being considered as suspicious. Sometimes with hindsight in history you see that was true. But in general it isn't fair for many athletes to say that so and so is by definition doped because he or she has won a match.
dpa: Football doesn't seem to have a strong Olympic spirit. Many over-23 stars are not allowed to be in Beijing.
Rogge: I am very happy that the big players want to participate in the Games. Ronaldinho will go to the Games. A lot of great players want to go. The Games are something special for them. Their clubs have other motives. I feel supported by FIFA and (its president) Sepp Blatter because FIFA has reminded the clubs that they have to release the players. The law says that if a club doesn't release a player then the player will be suspended for the whole period of the Games. I said once that the ideal situation would be no restriction, but I said also at the same time that I respect the agreement signed by Samaranch and Havelange 15 years ago. We are happy to have football. It is the most popular sport in the world, it is a success in the Olympic Games, they are number three in (TV) audience among the 28 sports and they are number one in the sale of tickets.
dpa: The Tour de France has seen more doping cases in cycling.
Rogge: I had hoped that the world of cycling would have understood better that it was time to change. The first day when (Manuel) Beltran was caught i thought ok, he is 37, he is still a guy of the old school, he has not understood it and he will never understand it. But then my morale started to crumble a little bit when you have (Moises) Duenas, 27, and now you have (Riccardo) Ricco, 24. It is sad because like everyone I had hopes that the new generation would bring a new attitude to the sport. Are they two exceptions in the young generation? I would hope so. But you know we should not be naive. My conclusion to that is that testing is effective. We had 12 cases in Sydney with 2,500 tests, we had 26 cases in Athens with 3,500 tests and now we are going to have 4,500 tests. I am not saying I believe in the purity of everyone, unfortunately that is not possible, but I think that the testing is more efficient.
dpa: Does the UCI risk its place in the Olympics over doping when the sports for 2016 are decided next year?
Rogge: We feel the UCI is checking thoroughly. They are the number three federation (in the number of drug tests). It is not the UCI people who are guilty, it is the athletes who are guilty. I might be wrong, but we believe there are still a substantial number of clean riders that you can not penalise because others have cheated.
dpa: The sports programme for 2016 will be under review next year with two new sports to be added.
Rogge: There are seven possibilities. You might have the return of baseball and softball, there is golf, there is squash, there is karate, there is rugby and there is rollerblade. The programme needs to evolve, I think the IOC has evolved a lot in terms of what I would call events. We introduced the windsurfing in sailing, snowboard in skiing with success, we introduced a new sport like triathlon which was a young sport that emerged. We introduced taekwondo that has become extremely popular. We introduced the beach volleyball, now BMX. There are constant changes, but these were mostly changes of events. Now we have created a system where automatically there will be a kind of rotation of two sports.
dpa: The Olympics have been hosted everywhere in the world except South America and Africa. Rio de Janeiro is bidding for 2016, what does it take to win the Games?
Rogge: To convince the IOC that they are capable of organizing the Games, and definitely we will have a very good bid. Whether they will win or not is still a question mark, i can not say. The issue is that the Games are made for the athletes, the Games are not made for public opinion. And the Games are not made to please a country and to please a continent. The city has to earn the games by proving it is capable enough. And both in Africa and South America there are cities who in the short and mid-term are capable of organizing Games. Cape Town had a very good bid in 1997 and came third behind Athens and Rome. It was a good bid. It was maybe not the time yet. But it is clear that there are enough cities in Africa that can launch a very good bid, the same in Latin America.
Ends interview
There are currently no comments for this article. Be the first to comment! (no registration required)
There are currently no comments for this article. Be the first to comment! (no registration required)