Anti-doping bodies meet one year after Armstrong scandal
Johannesburg (AFP) - One year after cyclist Lance Armstrong's fall from glory, global doping bodies started a four-day meeting in Johannesburg Tuesday to decide the future of the fight against banned substances.
The disgraced former Tour de France champion would need "something close to a miracle" to have a lifetime ban lifted, outgoing global anti-doping chief John Fahey said in Johannesburg, as the sporting world still reels from the scandal.
Global sporting leaders will pass a new muscled-up code on Friday that will tighten punishments and give the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) more teeth.
"I am confident the investigative power that we will get this week through the revised code will make WADA more effective with dealing with people who drop the ball in the future," Fahey told media.
At the moment WADA does not have powers to enforce compliance.
Armstrong, 42, was stripped of his record seven Tour de France titles won between 1999 and 2005, but has said he will cooperate to discover the extent of doping in the sport so long as he's treated the same as his fellow drug cheats.
Punishment for other cyclists has seemed less severe after they admitted to using performance-enhancing drugs.
Ultimately only the American anti-doping agency USADA could decide to review sanctions, but Armstrong would need "a damn good case", said Fahey.
The cyclist's case follows years of sophisticated doping and denials of wrongdoing.
Less than one percent of doping checks give an abnormal result, though tests have jumped from 150,000 a year to 250,000 since WADA's creation 14 years ago.
For more typical cases the revised, third World Anti-Doping Code doubles punishment for intentional transgressors from two to four years -- an automatic disqualification from the next Olympics.
At the same time it has "flexibility" toward athletes who accidentally take banned substances, such as certain medicines.
The new rules will come into effect in 2015.
Amid chilly relations with sports federations, WADA said world football body FIFA would probably need different labs for doping tests in next year's Brazil World Cup.
WADA in August revoked accreditation for Rio de Janeiro's testing lab, and there is too little time to be allowed back in.
"It's almost certain it won't happen before the World Football Cup next year," said Fahey.
By implication FIFA would have to fly samples for testing to other countries.
Sporting federations have been hot under the collar over WADA's "schoolteacher" attitude of constant accusations.
Some would like it to play a larger service role in actual doping tests, but the body says it lacks the capacity.
On Friday the conference will confirm WADA's new president. Scotsman Craig Reedie is the only candidate and his appointment is seen as a formality.
Designated by the International Olympic Committee (IOC), the 72-year-old served on London's 2012 Olympics organising committee and has been an IOC vice-president for the past year.
His deputy will be Makhenkesi Stofile, a former South African sports minister and the country's current ambassador to Germany.
The presidency rotates between the body's two founding members -- governments and sports federations -- and the sporting world will no doubt welcome back a leader seen as one of their own.
By the end of the week WADA will also receive an investigators' report on Jamaica's anti-doping programme.
Seven Jamaican athletes, including former 100-metres world champion Asafa Powell and double 200-meter Olympic champion Veronica Campbell-Brown, tested positive for banned substances this year.
Fahey accused the country of "dropping the ball".
The report includes recommendations on governance and operations in the Caribbean island's sport management.
