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----- Original Message -----
From:
Georg Facius
To:
European Athletic Associatiom
Sent:
Thursday, May 27, 2004 3:54 PM
Subject:
For the EAA Council - concerning anti-doping
INFORMATION FOR THE MEMBERS OF THE EAA COUNCIL
Dear friends and colleagues,
Attached I am sending you some information and material concerning the fight against doping in Europe, which I believe it is important that you are aware of
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EXCERPTS-DOPING CONTROL
Attachment c)
includes excerpts from reports I have made in the latter years as an EAA Official concerning violation of doping regulations and procedures. The contents is at best surprising, but more likely depressing, if not horrifying, to everyone who wants fairness and equal conditions for the athletes, not to mention improvements in the fight against doping.
Mind you, this is what only one Official has experienced, and all the reports I have made in these latter years are represented, so statistically I quess it is fair to asume that a lot of other similar incidents have happened all over the place.
This is not something we can just rub off on IAAF or on the National Federations for that matter. This is happening in the back yard of, and under the jurisdiction of, EAA, and that is why I have repeatedly been suggesting education of meeting organisers and national doping control officials as well as EAA Representatives and Officials.
I am well aware that there are people in athletics who do not agree with this, and who are not in favour of improved doping control, and that there are organisers who detest such detailed reports, and the persons who make them, and that it could be, perhaps that some of these people have a lot of influence.
AGENDA OCT 2003
The Anti-doping Working Group was formed in 2001, and I have been a member of the group ever since. During all that time there has been held only one (1) meeting (August 2002), and I do not know exactly what has induced this diminutive - or practically non existent - activity. I have tried repeatedly to bring about some activity, and
attachment d)
is part of a mail I forwarded to EAA in October 2003 with proposals and topics for a meeting of the Group, as I have earlier forwarded similar material. Unfortunately there has never been any reaction to this.
CLOSING REMARKS
I do hope that the above and attached material speaks for itself. It is all facts and figures and I will not add any subjective remarks, except saying that, when I read the material it tells me that something - in fact an awful lot - needs to be done, and that nothing is being done now.
I sincerely hope it tells you the same.
Kind regards,
Georg Facius
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-------Original Message-------
From:
Georg Facius
Date:
09/21/04 17:10:38
To:
Hansjörg Wirz
Cc:
EAA
;
Clemens Prokop
Subject:
doping
Dear Hansjörg,
I am truly sorry that I have to bother you, the President, with some problematic matters, but as I end up against a black wall when trying to contact EAA and other relevant persons, one of the last possibilities seems to be to raise these matters with you.
On May 13th this year DEN, among other federations, received a fax, signed personally by you, concerning a letter, which DEN allegedly should have co-signed, a letter concerning anti-doping.
As far as I understand the letter has been written by DLV, and on the occasion of the indoor championships in Budapest, a number of federations should have signed it on spot. At that time it must have been done by our former president Thomas Thomsen, and it appears that he did not get, or did not bring home with him, a copy of said letter.
So, having received your letter, I, on behalf of DAF, wrote to Ivan asking for a copy, and when that did not give a result, i wrote to EAA and as that did not help I wrote to Clemens Prokop, still without any result. The correspondence is attached to this mail.
I cannot imagine why it is impossible for a Federation under EAA to obtain neither a copy of a letter which the President of EAA has referred to in a fax to that Federation, nor any reaction or answer whatsoever, and I ask you kindly to enlighten us in this matter.
Also I cannot imagine why, as a member of the Anti-doping Working Group I have not received a copy of that letter, about which you write to a number of Federations, that the ADWG will be asked about the letter, and given the task to elaborate on feasible proposals etc., and where my imagination stops completely is when I also cannot get any reaction or answer whatsoever from the chairman of the ADWG concerning this mysterious and secret letter. This is even more strange as I believe that he is the author of it. I would be grateful if you would inform me of this also.
Thus I have no more imagination left to deal with the fact that I have now, for a very long time since the one and only meeting of the ADWG tried, again and again, to call for a meeting of the ADWG, and have repeatedly forwarded suggestions and proposaIs for a meeting agenda, and informed about problems and shortcomings in the doping control in Europe (lastly summed up in my mail of May 27 to the Council), trying to the best of my ability and knowledge to live up to the task bestowed on me as a member of the ADWG, under the, perhaps misunderstood, impression that EAA would appreciate when members of committees, commissions and working groups used their time, energy, skills and knowledge by working for EAA.
In spite of this and in spite of the ADWG being an official working group, selected by the Council which is elected democratically by the Member Federations, there has been absolutely no response and no reaction from the responsible bodies, EAA, the Council, or the chairman of the ADWG, and I fail completely to understand how this can be possible in a civilised, democratic organisation.
I would be most grateful if you could tell me why the ADWG, and I as a member, have been handled in this way.
Apart from the fact that any well founded proposal or question should be entitled to at least some kind of reply within a serious and well functioning organization, I do not suppose that the silence is due to the fact that EAA believes that there is no doping problem in Europe, or that, if there is, it is not the business of EAA.
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The painful disclosures in Athens of the doping situation within EAA are most depressing for all who love athletics and cherish equal conditions for all athletes within a clean sport, and they cast a long shadow over the athletic competitions.
Obviously it cannot go unnoticed that out of some 27 doping cases related directly to the games in Athens, 10 was within athletics and 11 in weight lifting. All the other sports, which underwent the same comprehensive testing programme, accounted for a total of only 6 cases.
Out of the 10 cases in athletics 9 were from within EAA !
As has become the case in cycling, people (and sponsors !) are left with an uncertainty as to the background of, not only outstanding results, but also just good results in athletics. Within the athletic inner circles this is even more outspoken, and one example of this from Athens is, that the coach of the Danish shot putter Joachim B. Olsen, when asked by some other coaches about the training of JBO, was met with disbelief, if not ridicule, when explaining that the only secret behind his development was hard work.
Let me mention just one specific point here, of the points I have raised, the lack of education of Doping Stewards and the lack of guidelines concerning their task. Those devices used in Athens, containing "foreign" urine, could not have been put in place, had the athletes been kept under surveillance by Doping Stewards from the time of notification to the time they produced their sample, such as they should have been, and it is obvious that this slip in procedure means that others may have got away with it, as at least one athlete apparently did. It is not very likely that the first time this "system" was tried was at the olympics.
Finally, let me repeat from what I wrote in my mail to you of May 27:
"This is not something we can just rub off on IAAF or on the National Federations for that matter. This is happening in the back yard of, and under the jurisdiction of, EAA, and that is why I have repeatedly been suggesting education of meeting organisers and national doping control officials as well as EAA Representatives and Officials."
I look forward to your valued answer.
Kind regards,
Georg Facius
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Dear Hansjörg
As I wrote in my mail, and as I have written in two mails to EAA and one to Clemens Prokop, and finally the mail to you, we did not have a copy of the letter that was sent to you - not by several Federations, it seems - but on behalf of several Federations. So probably our former president, who apparently have agreed to the letter, did not bring home with him a copy from Budapest, and consequently your reply to a letter unknown to us came as a surprise - but anyway, at last we have got it, and thank you for that.
At least this was a minor problem, but very strange that one cannot get from EAA a simple copy of a letter without all this.
As for the mail of 27 May 2004, which is definitely a more serious matter, you must excuse my saying, that it is just not possible, that no one with in EAA and the Council has received it and noticed it.
I sent the mail on the 27 to you, with copy to EAA and Clemens Prokop - that is three chances.
I sent the same mail again on the 28, again to you, with copy to EAA and Clemens Prokop, that is three more chances, and this time I asked for a receipt - which I got, that is more than a chance.
Furthermore on June 1st I forwarded the same mail to the members of the Anti-doping group, which includes, among others, Ivan Khodabasch, Philip Lamblin and Clemens Prokop - that is three more chances, and last, but not least, the mails from Arne ljungqvist of 16th June, are based on, and refers to my mail of 27th May.
So what does it take to get a message through to you and to EAA and to the Council? I would still like the mail of 27. May to be distributed to the members of the Council.
We have known each other for a very long time, and worked together, I believe, with mutual respect, since the old days of Westathletic, and I must ask you now, what is behind all this.
When I send you this mail, I will at the same time forward the two mails of the 27 and 28 and the receipt I got from EAA.
However, most important, after four years of doldrums in the Anti-doping Group, I am hopefully looking forward to some real good response to the contents of my mails of 27th May and of 21st September.
So, as for the working groups, and the committees, where I have also experienced eight years in the Competition Committee, I think that one of the main problems are that those assigned as chairpersons, are already preoccupied with a number of other tasks, not least those who are - besides members of Council - also presidents or general secretaries of their national federation.
It is not so much a problem of clarifying responsibilities, it is a problem of getting something done.
It is also interesting that within IAAF, the chairpersons of committees and commissions are not necessarily also members of the Council.
Best regards,
Georg
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Dear Hansjörg,
In order to ensure that you have the full picture, I attach the complete correspondence (except the latest mails I have sent directly to you) I have had with EAA and the Chairman of the ADWR, Clemens Prokop, in 2003 and 2004, including the one and only reaction I have got from - EAA (none) - respectively Clemens Prokop (one).
I would like to know whether you think this is the proper way to deal with such a serious matter, and whether this is the proper way to deal with a member of an EAA working group.
If nothing else, it is a clear - but sad - revelation of why things are not functioning as they should.
I also attach for your information, an article I have written about the question of gender verification which I have forwarded earlier to the EAA.
I am sending a copy of this to the Chairman of ADWG, with the following comment for you Clemens: I cannot for my life understand why you, with your very clearly expressed defiance of doping, do not seize the opportunity to use the ADWG to get something done, instead of for instance writing a letter to the President of EAA on behalf of a selection of federations, seemingly chosen at random, for what happens, it rotates in small circles, and where is that letter now - in the deep freezer of the ADWG.
A rather grotesque situation, don´t you thing - how do you feel about that? and who is stopping you from following up on your own letter in the ADWG - who is keeping the deep freezer running?
As one of the signatories to that letter the Danish Federation finds it very unsatisfactory, to say the least, that, as of now, 6 months after that letter was sent, and 5 months after Hansjörg has promised the federations that action would be taken through the ADWG, absolutely nothing has happened.
We, the members of ADWG have not heard from you in this matter, and no meeting dates has been set.
Don´t you feel a responsibility towards the signatories and towards the ADWG?
As I have asked Hansjörg, I must ask you, what is going on behind all this, or rather behind this nothing?
Kind regards,
Georg
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