Dear Editor,
While I join with fellow Jamaicans in the relief we all surely feel now that Veronica Campbell Brown has been cleared of the doping allegation, I am extremely angry that she was ever put through the pain and suffering of the past year.
Jamaicans have long been well known for standing up to injustice, but I often wonder why we are so silent, docile and accepting of the diktats of the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) and the demagogues like former head honcho Dick Pound of Canada.
Consider this if you ran any kind of business or organisation, from higglering to a multinational corporation, and you had to make 2,269 amendments to your operating code — as WADA has just had to do — what would that say about your firm?
The bottom line is: WADA is giving track and field a bad name and jeopardising the careers and reputations of athletes by including on its long list of banned substances items that do not and cannot be scientifically proven to enhance anyone's performance. Athletes need to band together, in a union if necessary, as those in other sports have done to bring pressure to bear on those who run the sport to cull this list.
The sport's governing body in Jamaica (JAAA) also needs to speak up loud and clear on this issue. It needs to stop drinking the kool aid.
Errol W A Townshend
Ontario, Canada
Time to turn heat on WADA
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While I join with fellow Jamaicans in the relief we all surely feel now that Veronica Campbell Brown has been cleared of the doping allegation, I am extremely angry that she was ever put through the pain and suffering of the past year.
Jamaicans have long been well known for standing up to injustice, but I often wonder why we are so silent, docile and accepting of the diktats of the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) and the demagogues like former head honcho Dick Pound of Canada.
Consider this if you ran any kind of business or organisation, from higglering to a multinational corporation, and you had to make 2,269 amendments to your operating code — as WADA has just had to do — what would that say about your firm?
The bottom line is: WADA is giving track and field a bad name and jeopardising the careers and reputations of athletes by including on its long list of banned substances items that do not and cannot be scientifically proven to enhance anyone's performance. Athletes need to band together, in a union if necessary, as those in other sports have done to bring pressure to bear on those who run the sport to cull this list.
The sport's governing body in Jamaica (JAAA) also needs to speak up loud and clear on this issue. It needs to stop drinking the kool aid.
Errol W A Townshend
Ontario, Canada
Time to turn heat on WADA
-->