Doping overshadows Spain's efforts to host 2020 Olympics

By Sebastian Fest Feb 10, 2012, 13:15 GMT

Madrid - Madrid's struggle to host the Olympics has parallels with the myth of Sisyphus, the Greek king who rolled a boulder up a hill, watched it roll back down and took it up again and again.

Every time the Spanish capital seems close to its goal, the boulder of doping undermines its efforts.

The head of Madrid's candidacy to host the 2020 Olympic Games, Alejandro Blanco, came out this week to defend 'the cleanness of Spanish sports' and even said he would be willing to promote a review of the foundations of the anti-doping battle.

'It is intolerable that Spanish sports are being accused of everything,' Sports Minister Jose Ignacio Wert said, reflecting his country's defensive stance.

Spain has been in the spotlight for doping for several days, a situation which also affects Madrid's Olympic candidacy.

The Spanish capital will present its applicant files on Monday, two days before the February 15 deadline, at the headquarters of the International Olympic Committee (IOC) in Lausanne. Madrid's rivals include Baku, Doha, Istanbul, Rome and Tokyo.

On Monday, the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) banned cyclist Alberto Contador for two years after 18 months of tension over the case.

On Tuesday, a satirical puppet programme on France's Canal+ television channel implied that doping was typical of Spanish sports. The programme targeted especially tennis player Rafael Nadal.

And on Thursday, CAS sanctioned former German cyclist Jan Ullrich with a ban of two years in a doping case linked with Spanish doctor Eufemiano Fuentes.

That revived the ghost of Operation Puerto, a huge Spanish anti-doping investigation which started as a good sign and ended up damaging Spain's image for the lack of concrete results.

'I think that Spain should have a found the way to disclose all the Operation Puerto. Right now it wouldn't be this perception, this feeling,' Francesco Ricci Bitti, president of the International Tennis Federation, told dpa over the telephone.

'It was not a mistake, (but) this was not good for sport in Spain, the fact that they weren't able to disclose all the aspects of the Operation Puerto,' said Ricci Bitti, who is also member of the IOC and of the executive committee of the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA).

In this context, Blanco launched an idea on Wednesday which could be dangerous for Madrid's image as a potential Olympic city. He suggested revising the principle of 'objective responsibility,' which is currently the cornerstone of the fight against doping.

'There is a lot of concern about this principle, because you make the athlete responsible everything he has in his body, and that is very complicated if we take it to the personal terrain,' Blanco said.

Spanish IOC member Jose Perurena does not agree with Blanco's proposal.

'It is a bit complicated to change, a deeper analysis is needed,' Perurena, who is president of the International Canoe Federation (ICF), told dpa.

'All of us presidents of international federations are in favour of the fight against doping, all of us. But the AMA rules are based on Swiss law. (If we revise that principle) we would be entering levels... What needs to be done is to cut doping at the root.'

Three years back, Madrid's candidacy for 2016 already encountered problems when WADA general director David Howman criticized a decree issued by Spain's then Socialist government relaxing the obligation for athletes to be always reachable for anti-doping controls.

The decree also prohibited the controls from being carried out between 11 pm and 6 am.

Spain retracted, but the damage had already been done. Perurena, however, believes Madrid's main problem in its 2020 candidacy is the economic crisis rather than doping.

'It has more influence,' Perurena said in a reference to how his IOC colleagues would vote in September 2013 in Buenos Aires.

Read more about Madrid

Read more about Olympics 2020