The chief medical officer for the International Olympic Committee, calling a lifetime ban from Olympic competition for drug-using athletes too strict, opposes such a proposal made at the committee's 95th session here.
"Personally, I am strongly against that because everyone deserves one mistake in life . . . everyone deserves a second chance," said Belgian Prince Alexandre de Merode, chairman of the IOC's medical committee and IOC vice president.De Merode's strongly worded response came Wednesday at a press conference at the IOC conference in San Juan where Tuesday U.S. IOC representative Anita De Frantz, a former rowing Olympian herself, proposed the lifetime ban.
"When you are an Olympian, you are an Olympian for life. No one can change that," she said. "But you agree you will compete with honor and integrity, and I think you forfeit that right when you take steroids."
The sanctions proposed by De Frantz, to be debated by the 92-member IOC Thursday, would make athlete eligibility standards - once the sole province of international sporting federations - the IOC's responsibility.
But de Merode judged the policy, which would bar Olympic participation immediately upon finding drug use by an Olympic athlete, too harsh. Athletes should be permitted a second chance if they use anabolic steroids, he said. "If we have a second case, of course, we must have life suspension," he said, adding that less severe sanctions prohibiting athletes from competing in one, two or three Olympic Games could be imposed.
De Merode said steroid use among Olympic athletes, appallingly brought to light during the 1988 Summer Olympics when Canadian sprinter Ben Johnson was found to have used steroids, was not as severe as sometimes reported.
While some estimated 80 percent of the athletes competing in the 1988 Summer Olympics used steroids, de Merode said only 5 percent were estimated to have used the strength-enhancing drug.
Further, having conducted 47,000 analyses on Olympic-class athletes over a one-year period - including those who participated in the 1988 Summer and Winter Olympics - IOC researchers found that only 2.45 percent used anabolic steroids, de Merode told reporters.
Nevertheless, the IOC must take a stand against Olympic athletes using performance-altering drugs. "It's time to show our real intent to do something about doping," he said.
To that end, de Merode said the IOC is considering implementation of a multi-million-dollar "flying lab" to conduct drug testing across the globe "anywhere . . . without any announcement." Additionally, the IOC is convening several "anti-doping" sporting conferences in the coming year.
Debate on the issue is scheduled for Thursday of the week-long IOC conference. IOC officials offered only cautious forecasts of the outcome of the discussion, saying only the subject is complex.