Major League Baseball

WADA says link between drugs, gambling

Published Oct. 10, 2010 1:00 a.m. ET

foxsports

Interpol and Major League Baseball investigators have given evidence to the World Anti-Doping Agency that criminal gangs selling performance-enhancing drugs also manipulate sports results for betting purposes, according to an Australian media report.

WADA chief executive David Howman highlighted the link between the doping and illegal gambling in an address to Commonwealth sports ministers in New Delhi last week, according to the weekend edition of The Australian newspaper.

Howman called on governments to unite against gambling corruption in sport the same way they combined to create WADA to control the use of performance-enhancing drugs, the report said.

"What we have suggested is that governments should look at WADA as an appropriate model to address other practices that challenge the integrity of sport," Howman was quoted as saying.

WADA first received evidence that doping syndicates were also involved in gambling three years ago, but the issue had "come to a head" in the last 12 months, The Australian reported.

"We have evidence from Interpol and from Major League Baseball that the people who are fixing betting are the people who are involved in illegal doping," Howman said. "The information has come from two different and unrelated sources who say the same thing."

Howman said the Commonwealth's sports ministers had responded positively to his proposal and he'd take the same message to a meeting of European Union sports ministers in two weeks.

"The Commonwealth meeting asked us to keep looking at the concept, but that's not in my mandate," Howman said. "It's really up to the governments to pursue this. I'm just raising the issue as one that merits further discussion."