Australian sport ‘rocked’ by drug scandal

The Australian Crime Commission (ACC) released the findings of “Project Aperio” on Thursday, saying there was evidence of at least one potential case of match fixing, widespread use of prohibited substances including peptides, hormones and illicit drugs, and the infiltration of organized criminal groups in the distribution of performance and image enhancing drugs.

“The findings are shocking and will disgust Australian sports fans,” Justice Minister Jason Clare said to a news conference in Canberra. He revealed that “multiple athletes from a number of clubs” in the big professional leagues are suspected of using or having used performance enhancing substances.

The findings are shocking and will disgust Australian sports fans. Justice Minister Jason Clare

The country’s two most popular sports competitions, the Aussie rules Australian Football League and the National Rugby League, have already acknowledged they’re working with the ACC and have launched independent investigations.

Other high-profile sports are doing the same. A state police force has suspicions about a recent soccer match which attracted heavy betting and seemingly unusual attention from Asia.

“This is the blackest day in Australian sport,” Richard Ings, the former chief of the Australian sports anti-doping agency, told the national broadcaster.

Australia’s Channel 10 sports presenter Brad McEwan told Channel 4 News: “The country is aghast…It has rocked Australia. This has been described as the blackest day in Australian sport and you won’t get too many people here who will disagree with that…Sadly there will be kids in this country who will be ripping posters (of their sports heroes) off their walls.”

Drugs ‘not cleared for humans’

Illicit drug use by professional athletes was more common in the bigger sports than current drugs testing programs suggested, the ACC report noted, adding that some coaches, sports scientists and support staff had “orchestrated and/or condoned the use of prohibited substances” that sometimes weren’t even cleared for use on humans.

Details of individuals and clubs involved couldn’t be released publicly, the ACC said, but certain sports had been given classified briefings and the report findings had been forwarded to the Australian Federal Police and state police forces.

The ACC revelations come in the same week that prominent AFL club Essendon asked authorities to investigate the use of certain supplements used in its 2012 fitness program, and European police agency Europol revealed evidence of hundreds of cases of match fixing in soccer around the world. The ACC report contained various references to U.S. cyclist Lance Armstrong and the sophisticated and systemic doping that wasn’t formally detected during his long professional career.

The country is aghast…It has rocked Australia. Brad McEwan, Australia’s Channel 10 sports presenter

World Anti-Doping Agency president John Fahey, who has served as a state and federal politician in Australia, said he was alarmed but not surprised by the ACC report’s findings.

“I think it tells us how wide (and) how deep this problem is – in a country that prides itself on fair play we’ve got a problem of the nature we’ve heard of today,” Fahey told ABC television. “It seems to be history in sport that you’ll address these issues only when something surfaces and you’ll try to avoid it until that time.

“That was the case in the Olympic movement with doping. It’s the case in cycling, we’ve seen so much of in recent times. Now sadly it’s the case it seems here in Australia.”