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Key IOC meeting on doping begins

Does International Olympic Committee president Juan Antonio Samaranch, with his 78 years, still have the determination to take firm action against sport's doping cheats?

This will be the crunch question when a special meeting of the 11-man IOC executive assembles in Lausanne on Thursday to discuss the increasingly vexed issue after the doping-tainted Tour de France.

Voices within the IOC have grown louder for much tougher action against doping - even though Samaranch himself suggested recently that doping rules be eased.

That proposal to curtail the list of banned performance-enhancing drugs prompted a sharp backlash -- not least from Alexandre de Merode, the Belgian head of the IOC's own medical commission.

What is at stake at tomorrow's meeting is the credibility of the IOC and its president. How serious are they in their avowed determination to stop the cheats? Not very, say the critics, who see the IOC as a paper tiger in its warnings to dopers.

For four years, Samaranch has been calling on international federations of the 34 sport categories taking part in the Olympics voluntarily to comply with the IOC's medical code.

The code lists banned substances and stipulates controls and legal frameworks including punishments and appeal procedures for offenders. But many of the federations doggedly decline to comply.

Up to now Samaranch has stopped short of forcing the federations to act. ''Our method is consensus,'' has been his approach. Now, many IOC members are calling for the paper tiger to get real teeth.

The elderly Samaranch has returned from his summer vacation to find a pile of proposals on his desk at Olympic House, in Lausanne.

The Mexican president of the International Volleyball Federation, Ruben Acosta, wants athletes to be required to swear under oath that they are doping-free before being allowed to compete internationally.

German IOC executive member Thomas Bach wants sanctions taken on federations which decline to sign the medical code - beginning with fines, and ending with competition bans if they still refuse.

That would hit them where it hurts. Without IOC funding, most federations would go under, given that such funding for 26 federations at the Atlanta Olympics approached 100 million dollars.

Also under discussion tomorrow will be how to avoid the ugly sort of scenes that saw French police implementing French anti-doping law at the Tour de France - detaining riders and team officials.

The whole issue of who polices the anti-doping regulations must be made clear now - and sports officials are in no doubt that they, and not national police forces - are the appropriate people to do so.

That in turn means having a clear definition of doping, and a proper system of controls both in competition and during training - and all of this before the 2000 Olympics in Sydney.

The success of this will depend greatly on Samaranch, who called tomorrow's meeting as a result of the reactions of horror which greeted his proposal radically to cut the doping substances list.

The pressure for action is now on the IOC - and pressure is also on Samaranch's own personal desire to retain his ''consensus'' ideal and not use force - all in the interest of Olympic ''unity''.

The Catalan Olympic chief, in office 18 years and with three more years still to go, looks like he will at last be forced to use force. If he doesn't, he will be judged lacking in will to deal with doping.

DPA