WADA Mess

The World Anti-Doping Agency was created to fight against drugs in sports. But clean athletes say it is betraying them.

- Curtis Gillespie

THE CANMORE NORDIC Centre, 100 kilometres west of Calgary, was the site of the cross-country and biathlon events during the 1988 Calgary Winter Olympics, and it remains the base for both Canadian national teams. It’s also where Beckie Scott is based: she skis there and lives just down the hill with her husband and their two young children. Scott was the first Canadian to earn an Olympic medal in cross-country skiing, winning gold at the 2002 Salt Lake City Winter Games — though it took two years of investigations and uncertainty before the two Russians who crossed the line ahead of her were stripped of their medals for doping.

Athletes around the world, competing and retired, have long admired Scott for standing up for fair play, both through her competitive record and her advocacy since retiring from competition. For these reasons, she was appointed to both the foundation board of the World AntiDoping Agency (WADA) and the athlete’s commission of the International Olympic Committee (IOC), in 2005 and 2006, and to WADA’s executive committee in 2012.