Pound controversial, but delivers message
CLEVELAND – Richard Pound might be the most irritating voice out of Canada since Celine Dion.
Those who call for change are seldom melodious and, in the case of Pound, occasionally off-key. The head of the World Anti-Doping Agency spoke last week at the City Club of Cleveland, and he doesn’t care how he sounds in delivering his message:
The sports world must do more to combat performance-enhancing drugs.
Many agree with the premise, but not the method by which Pound goes about achieving it. He is bombastic, controversial, over-the-top. He seems a bit hypocritical, not to mention a little anti-American.
Pound also terrifies the power brokers of our pro sports leagues. That’s the part about him we should applaud. Just mentioning his name is enough to send baseball union chief Donald Fehr running for any hill except Capitol Hill.
The fact that Pound wields no jurisdiction over the NFL, NBA, MLB and NHL has not stopped him from pushing for a zero-tolerance policy similar to the Olympic standard he helped adopt. The first offense carries a two-year suspension; the second earns a lifetime ban.
Amen.
“If there is no problem with doping in their sport why can’t (commissioners) have meaningful sanctions?” Pound said. ” … They don’t want to find their stars guilty – it’s bad for business.”
Pound has become one of the most powerful and polarizing figures in athletics despite his relative anonymity among American fans.
He publicly has challenged Lance Armstrong, Marion Jones and Barry Bonds. He mocked Bud Selig’s initial solution to baseball’s steroid problem well before Sen. John McCain called the commissioner on the Congressional carpet. Pound has lobbied Washington politicians to take a more critical look at pro sports and the impact they have on youth.
“You’ve got 15- and 16-year-old girls taking steroids to ‘tone up,’ ” Pound said. ” … It’s not just about 1,200 players in Major League Baseball. It goes all the way down.”
Pound is a former Olympic swimmer, a sixth-place finisher in the 1960 Summer Games. If they handed out gold medals for walking contradictions, however, his collection might rival Mark Spitz’s.
“A lawyer who decries steroids once attempted to defend the honor of disgraced Canadian sprinter Ben Johnson.
“A man who expresses outrage over athletic corruption has spent much of his life working for the International Olympic Committee, a nefarious family that almost makes the Corleones look like the Cleavers.
“A chairman of a supposedly unbiased agency talks about suspected athletes as if they are already guilty.
All of which undermines Pound’s crusade. He also takes numerous shots at American athletes and sports federations. (I’m guessing it was one too many Canadian jokes on “South Park” that set him off.)
But his claim that one-third of all NHL players use performance-enhancing substances hit decidedly north of the border. He was ripped by legendary Canadian hockey broadcaster Don Cherry, who like Pound has never let the facts bog down a good rant.
Pound is media savvy. He knows outrageous remarks create controversy, bringing pressure to bear on the subjects. He told Friday’s gathering how some drug cheats take balloons filled with “clean” urine and insert them into orifices in an attempt to defraud tests.
Audience members squirmed like Mark McGwire testifying before Congress.
“Most doping is deliberate, planned, calculated and assisted by medical doctors in full knowledge that it’s not within the rules of sports and also dangerous,” he said.
Pound believes momentum is gathering thanks to the BALCO scandal and baseball’s disastrous performance on Capitol Hill. He sees small battles being won in the war on doping.
You don’t have to like Pound to appreciate his effort. Sometimes, it takes an abrasive, complex agitator to get results. Cover your ears if you must, but Pound is not about to change his tune.