According to media reports 30,000 pages of documents released this week to Sports Illustrated and the Orange Country register by Dr. Wade Exum, the former United States Olympic Committee (USOC) director for drug control from 1991 to 2000, suggest that 19 Olympic medallists, including Carl Lewis, failed drug tests between 1988 and 2000 but were allowed to continue competing at top level.
International Olympic Committee member Dick Pound, head of the World Anti-Doping Agency, said the documents reinforce what some critics believed all along. “It’s what many people suspected about the U.S. Olympic Committee that it was being covered up. There were lots of rumours around”, Pound told Canadian Press.
The USOC called Exum’s accusations baseless because he had planned to use them in a lawsuit against the USOC for racial discrimination and wrongful dismissal. His case was dismissed in court through lack of evidence.
Pound also criticized USA Track and Field for its record on performance-enhancing drugs. He said he would like to get all the details from the files.
“The more we know the better it is. The more the world knows and the U.S. public knows what the USOC was doing, the more likely they are to fix the problem”.
