Cycling allowed drugs culture, departing WADA chief says

By Steve Keating

TORONTO (Reuters) - Cycling is paying the price for allowing a "culture of doping" to develop, World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) chairman Dick Pound said on the day that Floyd Landis was told he would forfeit his Tour de France win.

"It's safe to say they (the International Cycling Union) understand now how serious the problem is and the question is whether they will be able to put a sufficiently robust program in place to deal with the issue," Pound told reporters during a teleconference on Thursday.

"We have never said that doping in sport is limited to cycling but I have said that it is a particularly serious problem in cycling and that the leadership in cycling over the past decade has allowed what is a real culture of doping in the sport to develop and it is coming home to roost now."

American Landis was banned for two years on Thursday and told he would be stripped of his 2006 Tour title after a U.S. arbitration panel found him guilty of taking the banned male hormone testosterone.

Pound, who will hand over the WADA reins at the end of the year, questioned whether golf and baseball were doing enough in the fight to curb the use of performance-enhancing drugs.

Leading golf organizations outlined an anti-doping policy for the sport on Thursday, which will take effect from 2008, but Pound questioned their decision to create their own list of banned substances and sanctions rather than adopt the world anti-doping code.

"Quite a lot of progress had been made because even two-three months ago the PGA was denying that there was a problem or there would ever be one," said Pound as he prepared to preside over his final WADA executive committee meeting at the weekend in Montreal.

"But it's very disappointing to us they would not use the list that has been developed under the code.