Moses Supports USOC Offer to Take Over Drug Testing

Putting the U.S. Olympic Committee in charge of drug testing for all sports will create a more efficient and economical system, Edwin Moses said Thursday.

The governing bodies of each sport, such as The Athletics Congress for track, are responsible for testing their own athletes, resulting in disparate programs.

But USOC President Robert Helmick said this week that his organization will take over those chores and implement out-of-competition, year-round testing for any sport that requests it. Moses, who heads the USOC’s drug control committee, supports that approach.

“It’ll work,” he said at the U.S. Olympic Festival. “There’s no need for track and field or any other sport to have to do this when it can be done by one group.”

Moses, a two-time Olympic gold medalist, said many national governing boards don’t have the staff or money to run a drug-testing program while others, such as TAC, have long-established programs with large budgets.

Despite those expenditures, TAC has been criticized recently for running sloppy and selective drug-testing procedures. To head off that criticism, Executive Director Ollan Cassell has asked the USOC to assume TAC’s drug-testing responsibilities.

Phil Henson, in charge of the track competition at the Olympic Festival, said: “I think the public perception is going to be that TAC is not policing itself, that you have an outside body, so they might accept it a little bit more.”