We must recognise it’s not about foreigners doping. It’s real, it’s live and it’s here in the UK

Ask the man who set up UK Anti-Doping three years ago whether he is confident that UK sport is clean and his answer is sobering.

“Do you know what, I don’t know.” says Andy Parkinson. “The only people that can tell you are the athletes themselves. What I can say is we’ve got one of the most robust programmes, as many tools as we possibly can have to catch drug cheats.”

What the 43-year-old is prepared to concede is that: “There’s been a naivety in sport about drugs. What we’ve got to recognise in the UK is that it’s not about foreigners doping. It’s real, it’s live and it’s here in the UK.”

Parkinson’s reference to foreigners is aimed at quashing any feeling of superiority the British may have. After all, in recent months the American Lance Armstrong was finally proven to be a drugs cheat, Australia has faced up to shocking levels of doping across its sport and Spanish doctor Eufemiano Fuentes evaded jail despite his role at the heart of the Operation Puerto doping case.

Australia has tried to take a stand on its own drug problems following the publication of its Crime Commission report in February. This documented such widespread doping and illegal drug use among its athletes that it was described as “the darkest day” for sport in that country.

Parkinson was “not surprised by the findings” and says: “What we’ve seen from Australia is the professionalisation of sport and the pressure that goes with the win-at-all-costs mentality. If you think there’s anything significantly different between the Australian sporting landscape and the UK one, then you’re naive in the extreme. Both countries love sport. Both countries have well developed anti-doping programmes.”

I am talking to Parkinson just days after the judgement in the Fuentes scandal. Sitting in Madrid, Judge Julia Patricia Santamaria gave the doctor just a year’s suspended sentence and a paltry fine of £3,940 and controversially ordered 200 bags of frozen blood and plasma found in Fuentes’s laboratory to be destroyed.

“WADA [World Anti-Doping Agency] were hoping to have access to the Spanish evidence,” says Parkinson, “They only presented the cycling evidence against Fuentes in court but this case could be wider and involve football, tennis, boxing. [Fuentes admitted that, in addition to cycling, he had worked with other athletes.] Not to have access to this evidence is unfathomable. There are possibly 35 unknown names, they could be anywhere in the world. We could have either exonerated clean athletes or charged cheats. Fuentes was charged under Spain’s public health laws. In this country the charge would have been heavier.”

Parkinson makes this claim despite the fact, as in Spain, doping is not a criminal offence in Britain. But he argues that, since his agency were formed, there have been a number of successful criminal prosecutions.

“We had good interaction with a local police force and we managed to ban Ian Burns, a javelin thrower and coach, for four years. Rugby League player Terry Bridge, who served nine months in prison for trafficking, got a four-year ban as well from us. The current legislation allows us to tackle trafficking and supply in a very adequate manner.”

Satisfying as this is, Parkinson says governing bodies must do more.

“Sport in general has to be far more responsible in minimising the risk of kids going down the route of doping. We know young kids are using anabolic agents, basically to look good. Image is important in this modern society. But these are not sports people. They want a six-pack quickly, they take anabolic steroids. You go on the internet. You can find all manner of pharmaceutical products. You see supplements in the supermarkets now. I was in Covent Garden at the weekend. You can buy tubs of IGF-1, a banned substance. This inevitably drifts over into sport.”

What is of particular concern for Parkinson is how coaches encourage children to take drugs. He recalls a conversation with a senior person in sport whose 14-year-old could not make the football first team. “The coach told him, ‘you need to get physically bigger to get to the first team. So go away and come back after the summer and we’ll do some training with you.’ That’s a lot of pressure on a 14-year-old.

“The impact of that innocent conversation is that the first thing you do is go to your laptop and google ‘how do I become bigger?’ Before you know it, you’ve got human growth hormone. This person worked in sport and persuaded his son to go a different route. We’ve got to have something that protects them from going down that route, one that is difficult to get out of.”

UK Anti-Doping does have a confidential hotline in association with Crimestoppers but Parkinson knows it can take courage to call.

“Intimidation and bullying occurs in the sporting environment. Look at Fuentes, look at Armstrong. Sport often has a mafia-style operation, the premise of sport being you operate within a team. Nothing goes out of the dressing room. What goes on tour stays on tour. The loyalty factor in sport is a barrier for us. The Armstrong case showed that you require somebody from within the circle to break ranks.

“Armstrong should give evidence if he wants personal closure and because of all the clean riders out there who are still being implicated as dopers, just by pure association with him.”

Parkinson worries that Armstrong’s shadow, like that of Ben Johnson over athletics, may never be erased. “I don’t know how cycling will reform itself.”

For that to happen, says Parkinson, it also needs sponsors to manage expectations. “If you look at track versus road cycling, it’s the same organisational structure, a lot of the time it’s the same athletes. Yet the [drug] culture is vastly different. The road cycling teams are owned by sponsors. If sponsors were to take a firm stand and pull out of cycling, that would have quite a significant impact on drug taking.”

The Londoner reveals the Australian report into their drugs problems has made his agency look hard at the Rugby League World Cup being held here in November. “With all the Australian media interest in rugby league, we now have a responsibility to make sure that event is legitimate and clean.”

Parkinson is also keen to make sure that next summer’s Commonwealth Games in Glasgow will mirror the 2012 Olympics and pass off without major drug problems. However he warns: “You start from a different position with the Commonwealth Games. You have different athletes from a host of nations whose anti-doping programmes internally would not be very strong. Our athletes receive a lot of education. But that’s not to say that every one of the 79 nations coming to Glasgow has the same access.

“You’ve got younger developing countries coming through who don’t necessarily have access to the information that our athletes have. We would want our education programme to go further than for an Olympic Games and reach out to these countries.”