Recommendations of the French Senate Inquiry on Doping

The French Senate has release its report into doping in sport. Here is how Reuters reported the release:

The top two in the 1998 Tour de France - Italian Marco Pantani and Germany's Jan Ullrich - were taking the banned blood booster EPO, a French Senate inquiry into sports doping said on Wednesday.

The medical stubs enclosed in the 918-page report, when compared against a separate list of test results, also reveal that American Lance Armstrong tested positive for EPO in 1999.

Just three days after the end of the 100th Tour, an event that was dogged by persistent speculation about doping, the 21-member parliamentary group said a "truth and reconciliation" commission should be created to lift the veil of silence on illegal practices.

The group recommended that the French government finance studies about the extent of doping, its risks and the range of drugs used.

"We cannot properly fight something that we don't understand," parliamentarian Jean-Jacques Lozach, the group's spokesman, told journalists.

"Speaking of doping doesn't harm sport but instead contributes in the medium and long term to restore its greatness. Not speaking about it often means not doing anything."

In a press release responding to the report, the UCI -- the international body which governs cycling -- essentially called the report old news, and suggested that the doping problems of cycling are a thing of the past:

"In recent years, cycling has been totally transformed. It is now possible to race and win clean and there is a new culture within the peloton where riders support and believe in clean cycling. Cycling now has the most sophisticated and effective anti-doping infrastructure in world sport. Today, cycling leads the way in the fight against doping in sport"

These comments are evocative of the kind of statements that UCI has made in the past, most famously with respect to Lance Armstrong.

The fact that the French Senate has seen fit to investigate doping provides another illustration of the public-civil share governance of sport when it comes to doping. The recommendations of the report call for a greater governmental role in the regulation of doping in sport. Aided by my high school French and Google Translate below are the recommendations of the report, mostly in coherent English. Not that in the below the acronym AFLD refers to the French Anti-Doping Agency.

PROPOSALS OF THE INQUIRY: THE SEVEN PILLARS OF THE FIGHT AGAINST DOPING

1. Know

• Establish a "truth and reconciliation" commission under the auspices of the sports movement, making the date on current and past doping practices in sport (Proposal No. 1).
• Allow and support the implementation of retrospective epidemiological studies to improve the current state of knowledge regarding the use of doping and health risks (Proposal No. 7).
• Identify in statistics relating to offenses which resulted in conviction cases under any doping (Proposition 8).
• Conduct regular work of academic research on the traffic of doping products in France, on the model of Donati report and Paoli (Proposal No. 10).
• To establish federations by a risk analysis of Doping-specific discipline (Proposal No. 36).

2. Prevent

• Establish an anti-doping charter schools in all sports and physical activities (Proposal No. 3).
• Include in the strategy of prevention of doping control program for educational purposes (without penalty) for non-licensees (Proposal No. 4).
• Strengthen the training and education of current and future physicians to the issue of doping in the initial and continuing training (Proposal No. 5).
• Establish agreements between the AFLD and school sports associations in the second degree (UNSS and UGSEL) on shares of doping prevention (Proposal No. 12).
• Develop specific awareness campaigns on the risks of taking performance-enhancing drugs in gyms (Proposition 13).
• Restart the regional commissions prevention and fight against doping led by the corresponding inter-doping (Proposition 14).
• Refer to the AFLD responsibility AMPD (Proposal No. 15).
• Provide opportunities to the AFLD to prohibit athletes work with some doctors who participated in doping practices (Proposal No. 2).
• Restore the monopoly of AMPD in certification before delivery of licenses for sports sanctioned (Proposal No. 16).
• Streamline map AMPD and ease their implementation framework (Proposition 17).
• Better information on the existence of the toll in the AMPD and SPF (Proposal No. 18).
• Refer to the AFLD jurisdiction doping prevention, by loading the regional policy coordination, facilitation of AMPD through its inter-related, and management of toll (Proposition 19).
• Attach clear regulatory doping prevention medical monitoring, transmitting the results to the department controls the AFLD and allowing the results to feed the biological passport (Proposal No. 20).
• Establish a validation procedure sports schedules by the Ministry on the basis of risks to the health of athletes (Proposition 21).
• Set a "right to rest" for players that could be sports, their unions and public authorities (Proposal No. 22) argued before the judge.
• Transforming the French Agency against Doping Agency in the prevention and fight against doping (Proposition 23).
• Create a department of prevention of doping in the AFLD, whose orientations are defined by the Scientific Steering Committee (Proposal No. 52).

3. Check

• Define all competitions held in France as national default, subject to the communication by the International Federation a list of international events it intends to control (Proposal No. 28).
• Ensure specialization doping samplers approved by reducing their number and increasing their continuing education (Proposal No. 25).
• Establish, at the AMA, an accreditation process or international accreditation samplers (Proposal No. 26).
• Support to the AMA limiting the jurisdiction of international federations to only sporting events in the organization of which they are actually involved (Proposition 27).
• Support to WADA a period during which the NADO does not have jurisdiction autonomous control of an international competition (Proposal No. 28).
• Support to the AMA to be allowed to control a NADO international competition without approval of the FI or the AMA when the FI does not intend to exercise its jurisdiction (Proposal No. 30).
• Systematically agreements between the AFLD and international federations to share the monitoring programs on international events (Proposition 31).
• Increase the proportion of spot checks in total control of the AFLD (Proposition 32).
• Include in professional team sports, collective location of the team during the season and an individual obligation for all season players (Proposition 33).
• Specify, in out of competition testing, those made unexpectedly, as defined by the World Anti-Doping Code (Proposal No. 35).
• Provide priority transmission of the results of passport anti-doping authorities before transmission athletes (Proposition 37).

4. Analyze

• Expand the scope of commodities in the analyises (Proposal No. 39).
• Provide a mission of the Inspectorate General of Youth and Sport on how the national laboratory Chatenay-Malabry, as well as the relevance and the manner of its affiliation with a university (Proposal No. 40).
• Support to WADA removing the distinction between substances and methods prohibited at all times and those are the only competition (Proposal No. 6).

5. Sanction

• Refer to the AFLD the sanctioning authority in the first instance (Proposal No. 41).
• Bring to a four-year term of suspension when taking heavy doping (Proposal No. 43).
• Provide systematic therefore what fines imposed a suspension of two years or more (Proposition 44).
• Wear EUR 100 000 ceiling of possible fines for sports (Proposal No. 45).
• Assign the AFLD the product of financial penalties (Proposal No. 46).
• Establish a mechanism repented to improve the overall effectiveness of the fight against doping (Proposition 57).
• Allow the AFLD to impose collective punishment against teams that have been more than two individual penalties during a season (Proposal No. 47).
• Develop sanctions on the basis of elements of non-analytical evidence (Proposal No. 48).
• Create a sanctions committee, separate from the College, responsible to impose disciplinary sanctions on the basis of educated by the Agency (Proposal No. 49) records.
• Expand the profile of President of the AFLD in connection with the diversification of functions of the Agency (Proposal No. 50).
• Transforming the department controls department investigations and control (Proposition 51).
• Support to WADA removing the power to sanction international federations against international sports (Proposition 42).

6. Penalize

• Penalize detention products against persons practicing a sport within an institution of sport and physical activity (APS) (Proposal No. 9).
• Extend the possibility for Customs to resort to "buying shots" for doping (Proposition 11).
• Encourage the adoption by the European Union harmonization directives in the fight against the trafficking of doping products (Proposal No. 60).

7. Cooperate

• Provide national coordination in the fight against doping, responsible mainly for analyzing the results of the various regional commissions (Proposition 58).
• Specify in Article L. 232-20 of the Code of sport information involving any doping are systematically brought to the attention of the OCLAESP and communication of information relating to any doping is formalized by an agreement between everyone involved (Proposal No. 55 ). Is addressed to all records in custody of persons suspected of having committed an offense referred to in Articles L. · Provide that the AFLD 232-9, L. 232-10, L. 232-25 and L. 232-26 of the Sports Code (Proposal No. 56).
• Suggest to the AMA to recommend members to communicate the point of contact responsible for the criminal prosecution of doping at the national level (Proposition 59).
• Establish 8 doping corresponding inter within the regional offices available to the AFLD full time (Proposal No. 24).
• Encourage the AFLD to enter into agreements with the major federations for the organization of exchange of location data (Proposal No. 34).
• Share data with teams intelligence to conduct a qualitative analysis of the results in the crossing, especially with location data (Proposition 38).
• Systematically transmit department analyzes the AFLD a sample of doping products or suspected to be when they are seized by customs or other law enforcement (Proposition 54).
• Expand the base of the "Buffet" tax and affect the recipe ceiling, the AFLD to ensure equal funding subsidy / tax affected.