Mutiny in Belgium against new anti-doping rules

Mar 31, 2009, 14:13 GMT

Brussels - An unlikely alliance of Belgian footballers, cyclists and volleyballers is looking to fight new anti-doping regulations introduced at the beginning of January by the World Anti- Doping Agency (WADA) in the country's courts.

Some 65 athletes have taken legal action in Belgium's highest court against the new out-of-competition testing rules, which require elite athletes to give notice of their location on a chosen one-hour period each day, seven days a week.

The athletes' lawyer Kristof De Saedeleer believes his clients have a good chance of success, a situation that could be of interest to FIFA and UEFA, who have both expressed their strong opposition to the new WADA rules.

'We want to send out a signal to the world,' said De Saedeleer, who is confident that the national anti-doping organizations will have to scrap the new methods.

'We believe we have a convincing case,' he told German Press Agency dpa from his office in Brussels.

Belgian courts have found in favour of athletes in previous similar cases, he argued.

Earlier in March, FIFA president Joseph Blatter spoke out against the rules, saying they were an attack on the private lives of footballers.

'We are the international federations which probably undertake the most but we need some private sphere for our footballers,' the head of world football's ruling body said while attending the UEFA congress in Copenhagen.

Blatter said the federations were jointly combating doping but this should not turn into a 'witch hunt.'

De Saedeleer echoed Blatter's comments, saying that athletes no longer felt like human beings and that the new anti-doping rules were a breach of Articles 6 and 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights, which deal with the right to justice, and privacy and family life.

'They have the feeling that they no longer have any rights, only duties,' said De Saedeleer, who is representing footballers from first division side KV Mechelen, volleyballers from VT Knack Randstad Roeselare and cyclists from the Quick Step team.

'The athletes aren't against out-of-competition testing, they are not for doping,' said De Saedeleer. Instead, they are fighting a rule that states they have to state where they will be three months in advance.