Social Kick Podcast: Dick Pound Weighs In On Continued Fight Against Doping & Upcoming Olympics
Social Kick Podcast: Dick Pound Weighs In On Continued Fight Against Doping & Upcoming Olympics
Dick Pound, the first president of the World Anti-Doping Agency, sat down with the Social Kick Podcast with hosts Luke Paddington, John Mullen and Bryan Lundquist about the improvements WADA has made in the fight against doping, as well as the top priorities for the organization. Pound also speculated the amount of Olympic gold medalists that have doped in the past and went untraced, saying the percentage was “in the double digits.”
Pound, who is a committee member of the International Olympic Committee, has been one of the most influential members of the IOC for decades. He reminisced on the doping scandal surrounding Ben Johnson in 1988, who won the 100m gold medal at the Seoul Olympics in a new world record over Carl Lewis, but was disqualified days later for failing a doping test. Pound said that moment changed the way he believed athletes, saying that after that he never assumed truth was being told.
Dick Pound also weighed in on the IOC’s plan to vaccine athletes for the upcoming Olympic Games while the COVID pandemic is still ongoing, and said that it has to be up to each country’s federation.