Dick Pound

Dick Pound CC OQ QC
Dick Pound (2010)
Chairman of the Olympic Broadcasting Services
Incumbent
Assumed office April 4, 2014
1st President of the World Anti-Doping Agency
In office November 10, 1999 – 2007
Succeeded by	John Fahey
17th Chancellor of McGill University
In office July 1, 1999 – June 2009
Preceded by	Gretta Chambers
Succeeded by	H. Arnold Steinberg
Vice-President of the International Olympic Committee
In office 1987–1991
President	Juan Antonio Samaranch
In office 1996–2000
President	Juan Antonio Samaranch
President of the Canadian Olympic Committee
In office 1977–1982
Personal details
Born	Richard William Duncan Pound (1942-03-22) March 22, 1942 St. Catharines, Ontario, Canada
Nationality	Canadian
Spouse(s)	Julie Keith
Children	5
Residence	Westmount, Quebec
Alma mater	McGill University Sir George Williams University McGill University Faculty of Law
Occupation	Lawyer, author

Dick Pound

Medal record
Men's swimming
Competitor for  Canada
British Empire and Commonwealth Games
	1962 Perth	110 yd freestyle
	1962 Perth	4×110 yd freestyle relay
	1962 Perth	4×220 yd freestyle relay
	1962 Perth	4×110 yd medley relay

Richard William Duncan Pound, CC OQ QC (born March 22, 1942) is a Canadian lawyer and author, and a former competitive swimmer. He is a former president of the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) based in Montreal, and a former chancellor of McGill University. He served as vice-president of the International Olympic Committee (IOC) from 1987 to 1991 and again from 1996 to 2000,^[1] and was a one-time candidate for the presidency of that organization.

Pound is a staunch advocate of strict drug testing for athletes.^[2][3] In 2005, Time magazine featured him as one of the "100 Most Influential People in the World".^[4] On April 4, 2014, he was appointed chairman of the board of Olympic Broadcasting Services.^[5]

Early life and education

Pound was born in St. Catharines, Ontario, the eldest of four children.^[6] His father was an engineer at a pulp-and-paper mill,^[7] and the family moved often. His family moved to numerous Quebec towns, including La Tuque and Trois Rivieres.^[8] When Pound was six, his family moved to Ocean Falls, British Columbia.^[7] He attended Mount Royal High School and Selwyn House School in Montreal.^[9]

In addition to swimming, Pound was a squash player and won the Canadian intercollegiate championship twice.^[9]

Pound attended the Desautels Faculty of Management at McGill University, where he swam for the McGill Redmen from 1958 to 1962 and from 1964 to 1967.^[8] He established school records in every freestyle event, winning three Canadian intercollegiate gold medals in each of his freshman, sophomore and senior years.^[8] In 1962, he earned a Bachelor of Commerce degree and was on the Dean's List.^[10] One of his classmates was John Cleghorn. He received a licentiate in accounting from McGill in 1964 and got his chartered accountant designation the same year.^[11] He received a B.A. with honours^[6] from Sir George Williams University (now Concordia University) in 1963^[12] and graduated from the McGill University Faculty of Law with a B.C.L. in 1967. He was honoured by the Scarlet Key Society^[8] and was awarded the Carswell Company Prize.^[13] He served as managing editor of the McGill Law Journal.^[14]

Career

Swimming

Pound won the Canadian freestyle championship four times (1958, 1960, 1961, and 1962) and the Canadian butterfly championship in 1961.^[9] He competed for Canada at the 1959 Pan American Games in Chicago and the 1960 Summer Olympics in Rome, where he finished sixth in the 100 meter freestyle and was fourth with the 4 × 100 m relay team. He won one gold, two silver, and one bronze medals at the 1962 British Empire and Commonwealth Games in Perth, Australia^[8][15] and set a Commonwealth record in the 110m freestyle.^[8]

Canadian Olympic Committee

After Pound retired from competitive swimming, he served as secretary of the Canadian Olympic Committee in 1968.^[8] He became president of the organization from 1977 to 1982.^[1]

Olympics

In 1978, Dick was elected to the International Olympic Committee and put in charge of negotiating television and sponsorship deals. He was on the IOC executive committee for 16 years. Pound revolutionized the Olympic movement using such deals to transform the IOC into a multibillion-dollar enterprise. He became known as an outspoken critic of corruption within the IOC, while at the same time supporting the leadership of IOC President Juan Antonio Samaranch. His criticisms were given a wide airing after the scandals surrounding the Salt Lake City Olympics broke, and he was then appointed head of the inquiry into the corruption. He also campaigned vehemently for stronger drug testing.

With the retirement of Samaranch in 2001, he ran for president of the IOC, but the IOC chose Belgian Jacques Rogge. Pound finished third behind South Korean Kim Un-Yong,^[16] who was one of those found to have participated in the Salt Lake City scandals, and who was later prosecuted by the South Korean government.

World Anti-Doping Agency

Pound scaled back his involvement with the IOC. He helped found World Anti-Doping Agency, and became the organization's first president.^[9] In that role he oversaw an unprecedented toughening of the drug-testing regimen. Pound was an especially harsh critic of the Americans, arguing that there is widespread doping, especially amongst their track and field team. He also worked to expand WADA beyond the Olympics, calling on the major sports leagues to agree to WADA scrutiny. His allegations of widespread doping in professional bicycle racing at times brought WADA into fierce public conflict with the Union Cycliste Internationale (UCI). Pound's term as WADA president ended at the end of 2007; he chose not to run for another term.

Pound chaired a commission investigating Russian track, field and athletics doping. The commission released its report in November 2015, accusing the Russian state of being complicit in illegal doping, requesting suspension of the Russian Athletics Federation, suspending RUSADA and firing its director and declaring it was rife with corruption, and accusing Russian Sports Minister Vitaly Mutko of cover-ups. The report released by Pound's commission instigated an INTERPOL investigation. The commission's investigation also involved Russia's FSB spying on RUSADA during the Sochi Olympics.^[17][18]

Law

He is a partner in the law firm of Stikeman Elliott LLP in Montreal. He practises tax law. He is also the author of several books on legal history. He edits Pound’s Tax Case Notes, a review of tax-law court cases for lawyers. He did much of the reading of cases and the writing of the notes on international airplane flights to and from International Olympic Committee functions.

Controversies

NHL

Discussing the National Hockey League in November 2005, Pound said, “you wouldn’t be far wrong if you said a third of hockey players are gaining some pharmaceutical assistance."^[19] Pound would later admit that he completely invented the figure.^[20] Both the NHL and NHLPA have denied the claims, demanding Pound provide evidence rather than make what they term unsubstantiated claims. Since his comments were made, some NHL players have tested positive for banned substances, including Bryan Berard, José Théodore, and two of 250 players involved in Olympic testing. As of June 2006, there had been 1,406 tests in the program jointly administered by the league and the union, and none has come up with banned substances under NHL rules. Pound remained skeptical, claiming the NHL rules were too lax and unclear, as they do not test for some banned substance, including certain stimulants.^[21] In an interview with hockey blogger, B. D. Gallof, of Hockeybuzz on December 19, 2007, Pound was asked to expand on the 30% comment and subsequent reaction, expounded that stimulants was "the NHL's drug of choice". He also cited that the NHL will have no credibility on a drug policy if it, and other sports, continue to run things "in-house".^[22]

Lance Armstrong

In January 2004, Le Monde quoted Pound as saying that "the public knows that the riders in the Tour de France and the others are doping." This prompted a strongly worded rebuke from Lance Armstrong, who called Pound's comments "careless and unacceptable."^[23] Pound said he was surprised by the personal nature of Armstrong's response because he had never mentioned the cyclist by name.

Around the same time, scientists at a French lab were using frozen urine samples from the 1999 Tour de France to find a new way of detecting erythropoietin (EPO), an oxygen-boosting agent. The samples did not have names attached to them, only numbers, and were provided for research purposes only. But an article in the August 23, 2005 edition of L'Équipe reported finding documentation linking the numbers with the riders, with the findings from the research with samples linked to Armstrong, claiming that six of his 15 samples showed traces of EPO. Pound told the media that there was "now an onus on Lance Armstrong and the others to explain how it is EPO got into their systems."^[24]

The Union Cycliste Internationale launched an enquiry, led by lawyer Emile Vrijman, former head of the Netherlands’ antidoping agency (and later defense lawyer of athletes accused of doping). In his 132-page report,^[25] leaked to the media on May 31, 2006, Vrijman said no proper records were kept of the samples and that there had been no chain of custody and no process to ensure that the samples had not been spiked with banned substances at the laboratory. The report was highly critical of WADA and Pound, concluding that they had specifically targeted Armstrong and the UCI. The report also called for an investigation to "focus on the communications between Dick Pound and the media" and recommended that no disciplinary action be taken against any athletes.

In response, Pound dismissed the Vrijman report as “so lacking in professionalism and objectivity that it borders on farcical.”^[26] WADA released an official statement, criticising the Vrijman report as biased, ill-informed, speculative, and "fallacious in many aspects."^[27]

On June 9, 2006, Armstrong sent an eight-page letter to Jacques Rogge, president of the International Olympic Committee, demanding that action be taken against Pound. He wrote that Pound was guilty of “reprehensible and indefensible” behaviour and "must be suspended or expelled from the Olympic movement". In February 2007, the IOC ethics committee recommended that Pound exercise greater prudence in his public pronouncements. It declined to move toward removing Pound as an IOC member, and found it had no jurisdiction over WADA. In response, Pound said he was accountable to WADA, not to the IOC.^[28]

First nations comment

On August 9, 2008, during a conversation in French, when asked about whether the IOC was embarrassed to be affiliated with China's recent political history, he was quoted as replying: "We must not forget that 400 years ago, Canada was a land of savages, with scarcely 10,000 inhabitants of European origin, while in China, we're talking about a 5,000-year-old civilization."^[29]

Two months later, the Aboriginal advocacy group LandInSights asked for him to be suspended from the International Olympic Committee for the remark. Pound responded that it was a clumsy remark that was taken out of context and that in the particular French expression used, "un pays de sauvages", the French sauvages was not equivalent to English "savages".^[30]

Personal life

Pound resides in Westmount, Quebec, with his second wife, Montreal author Julie Keith. He has three children, Trevor, Duncan, and Megan from his first marriage and two stepchildren from his second.^[31]

Honours

In 1992, he was made an Officer of the Order of Canada and in 1993 was made an Officer of the National Order of Quebec. In 2014, Pound appointed a Companion of the Order of Canada.^[32]

Pound was awarded the Gold and Silver Star of the Order of the Sacred Treasure by the government of Japan in 1998.^[33]

In 2008, he won the Laureus Spirit of Sport Award for his work at WADA.^[34][35]

He is the Honorary Colonel of the Canadian Grenadier Guards (CGG).^[36][37]

In 2010, he was inducted into McGill University's Sports Hall of Fame.^[38]

Pound joined McGill University's board of governors in 1986 and was elected chair in 1994. He served as Chancellor of McGill University from July 1, 1999^[39] to 2009.^[1]

Published works

• Pound, Richard W. (1994). Five Rings over Korea: The Secret Negotiations Behind the 1988 Olympic Games in Seoul. Little Brown & Co. ISBN 978-0316715072. 
• Pound, Richard W. (2000). Chief Justice W.R. Jackett: By the Law of the Land. McGill-Queen's University Press. ISBN 978-0773518988. 
• Pound, Richard W. (2002). Stikeman Elliott: The First Fifty Years. McGill-Queen's University Press. ISBN 978-0773524118. 
• Pound, Richard W. (2004). Inside the Olympics: A Behind-the-Scenes Look at the Politics, the Scandals and the Glory of the Games. Wiley. ISBN 978-0470838709. 
• Pound, Richard W. (2006). Inside Dope: How Drugs Are the Biggest Threat to Sports, Why You Should Care, and What Can Be Done About Them. Wiley. ISBN 978-0470837337. 
• Pound, Richard W. (2007). Unlucky to the End: The Story of Janise Marie Gamble. McGill-Queen's University Press. ISBN 978-0773533004. 
• Pound, Richard W. (2008). Rocke Robertson: Surgeon and Shepherd of Change. McGill-Queen's University Press. ISBN 978-0773533745. 
• Pound, Richard W. (2013). Quotations for the Fast Lane. McGill-Queen's University Press. ISBN 978-0773542983. 
• Pound, Richard W. (2014). Made in Court: Supreme Court Cases that Shaped Canada. Fitzhenry & Whiteside. ISBN 978-1554553471. 

See also

• List of Commonwealth Games medallists in swimming (men)

References

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Dick Pound.

• Richard W. Pound at Stikeman Elliott
• Richard W. Pound at IOC