WADA doesn’t mind being overshadowed

As news of slugger Barry Bonds’ perjury indictment circled the globe Thursday, the cash-strapped World Anti-Doping Agency found itself on the sidelines of yet another major sports doping case.

Despite a multi-million network of drug testing labs operating around the world and a history of headline-making sports doping busts of its own, WADA has been overshadowed in some of the biggest drug-related sports scandals by law enforcement actions in the U.S., France, Spain, Mexico and Australia.

WADA suspicions about Olympic sprinter Marion Jones, for example, never resulted in sanctions until she confessed to steroid use in an unrelated federal money laundering case.

Only hours before the Bonds announcement, WADA Executive Director David Howman told 1,500 delegates here for the third World Conference on Doping in Sports that their agency was glad to see law enforcement investigators taking a lead role in such cases.

He said WADA is more comfortable setting standards and providing technical help for conventional police.

“We’re not a testing agency,” Howman said, explaining that testing athletes’ urine samples, analyzing the results, and hauling accused dopers before tribunals has become a financial burden. “We are tasked with being the thought leaders,” he said.

Increased police investigations would be one way to spare WADA from mounting financial pressures, agency officials said.

Indeed, the international sports doping program is facing such a severe long-term money squeeze that WADA is considering whether to sell sponsorships to wealthy corporations, including drug companies, officials acknowledged earlier in the day.

How such an arrangement would work is unclear, but the reason for it is not: The agency’s traditional funding sources -- national governments and the International Olympic Committee, which split the budget 50-50 -- are not up to supporting an anti-doping campaign on the scale that WADA’s leadership has been hoping to stage.

WADA this year will incur a deficit of $1.8 million on its $25.8-million budget. It will make up the shortfall from a dwindling reserve. But that’s still as little as half what the agency thinks an adequate program should cost -- not including testing and prosecuting violators.

“It’s crazy to think we can deal with the problems of doping in sport on a budget of $25 million a year,” said WADA President Richard Pound, who will retire Dec. 31 after eight years on the job. “We need to look for a paradigm shift and a magnitude of increase.” As a result, WADA will look to private industry, as well as charitable and educational foundations, for money.

The agency also wants to extend its reach into more corners of the globe by opening more regional offices. And it is hoping to bring American pro sports leagues under its umbrella, although the leagues and their players’ unions have consistently turned away its overtures.

Delegates from more than 200 national Olympic committees and hundreds of other sports organizations will spend much of today’s session modernizing the anti-doping code, which was originally written in 2003 and which sets anti-doping rules for the Olympic movement and hundreds of other pro and amateur sports organizations. Anti-doping professionals have accused WADA in the past of spending too little on research to develop sophisticated and reliable drug tests, and too much on pursuing athletes for trivial or questionable infractions. Those criticisms grew more pointed as agency officials talked about expanding or even doubling their budget in the near future.

Graeme Steel, head of the New Zealand anti-doping agency, complained that WADA regulations force national bodies like his to squander money on chasing athletes for unannounced drug tests or verify their eligibility to take over-the-counter asthma medicines with questionable effects on performance. Steel is also one of the most vocal critics of the agency’s pursuit of athletes for using marijuana and other recreational drugs. Such policies, he said, “lock in our resources beyond what is necessary and productive.”

Some delegates also observed that their countries already contribute as much to WADA as they can afford. WADA barred nine member countries, including financially strapped Dominican Republic, Guinea, Niger, and Togo, from sending delegates to the Madrid conference because of their funding arrears.

One problem is the fall in the value of the U.S. dollar, in which WADA’s member contributions are denominated. The dollar’s slide has been a particularly steep 20% against the Canadian dollar. The agency keeps its headquarters in Montreal and pays most of its 76 employees in Canadian currency. WADA’s litigation costs are also rising sharply. The agency appealed seven cases to the international Court of Arbitration for Sport in 2006 and 10 so far this year.

The agency has responded to this squeeze partially by shifting more of its costs to governments and the agency might have been hard-pressed to stage this week’s conference had not the government of Spain offered a subsidy.

WADA’s increasing dependence on public law enforcement agencies to build cases against cheating athletes reflects the same pressure. Pound claimed Thursday that Jones passed 160 doping tests before capitulating to federal agents last month and acknowledging a history of drug use in the course of plea bargaining over financial fraud charges. WADA’s search for new revenue sources beyond governments and the IOC is likely to be complicated. Several obstacles exist to WADA’s making deals with industry. One is the potential for conflicts of interest if the agency decided to ban a substance manufactured by a sponsor.

Nor is it clear that WADA’s name is worth much to private companies. “I’m not sure we have totally marketable rights we could sell,” said Sir Craig Reedie, the head of its finance committee.

michael.hiltzik@latimes.com