Cycling Canada and Canadian Centre for Ethics in Sport launch national consultation on doping

On Tuesday, Canada’s governing body for the sport of cycling, Cycling Canada (CC), and the Canadian Centre for Ethics in Sport (CCES) announced what it is calling a “consultation” on doping by this country’s athletes. The two organizations are looking for volunteers, both cyclists and those who support riders, to speak with an independent third party, LBB Strategies. The identities of the volunteers won’t be passed from LBB Strategies to CC or CCES, so riders, coaches, mechanics and others will remain anonymous. Any information gathered will not be used for sanctions.

The CC and CCES have indicated that the goal of this consultation is not to find and punish those guilty of doping. Instead, the two organizations are hoping to gain a better understanding of doping in Canada. They a looking for a snapshot, from Jan. 1, 1998 to today, of practices and perceptions of doping within the cycling community. They want to gain a better understand of what leads athletes to cheat. They are also trying to gage the scope of the practice in this country. How big is the problem? How big of a problem do cyclists think it is? Is the practice of doping becoming less prevalent?

With the information that LBB Strategies gathers, CC and CCES hope to improve their education and prevention strategies, which will be part of the Race Clean program. They also hope to develop more effective means of catching cheaters.

Interviews are scheduled to start soon and continue to into July. LBB Strategies will present a report to CC and CCES by the end of July. The report will be public.

CC has stressed that the Canadian consultation is different from the UCI’s Cycling Independent Review Commission (CIRC). The UCI, under president Brian Cookson, announced the CIRC on Feb. 11. It comprises a three-member panel—Dick Marty, chairman, Ulrich Haas and Peter Nicholson—whose goal is to learn about doping in cycling’s past.

“The primary purpose of our investigation is not to punish doping offenders, but to learn from the past so we can help ensure a better future for cycling. We will treat all witnesses fairly and so I urge anyone in the cycling community with information that can help our investigation to come forward. We have much work to do over the coming year and I hope, with the cooperation of the cycling family, the sport has a unique opportunity to learn lessons and regain trust,” Marty said in a statement.

While the aims of the UCI’s investigation and the Canadian consultation have some similarities, CC stresses a major difference. The CIRC can impose sanctions to UCI licence holders or reduce those sanctions. The Canadian consultation will not have that power. The CC does encourage Canadian athletes to participate also in the UCI’s investigation, which has a broader mandate that not only includes doping at the individual level, but also any connection to governing bodies and the UCI itself.

Another recent Canadian anti-doping initiative is the CCES’s report-doping hotline.

In January, the CCES imposed a two-year sanction on Canadian cyclist Sebastian Salas. In the spring of 2013, CCES and U.S. Anti-Doping Agency met with Ryder Hesjedal as part of an ongoing investigation into doping within cycling in Canada. After the Garmin-Sharp rider was outed by rider Michael Rasmussen in Danish media, the Canadian admitted to doping more than eight years ago. CCES issued a statement saying it was disappointed that Hesjedal waited so long before discussing his past transgressions. He didn’t not receive any sanctions because his doping practices fell outside the statute of limitations.