WADA Founder, IOC Member Dick Pound Retiring At The Age of 80

Dick Pound, who has been a fixture in the Olympic movement for over 60 years, is retiring from his post as a member of the International Olympic Committee (IOC).

Pound’s retirement, which will officially begin at the end of 2022, comes due to the fact that he’s reached his mandatory retirement age of 80, though the Canadian native will continue as an honorary member of the IOC.

“After that (turning 80), you don’t have a vote anymore,” Pound told The Canadian Press. “You’re invited to meetings and to Olympic Games, but you don’t really have active duties other than to dispense wise advice that nobody listens to.”

IOC members elected after 1999 must retire at the age of 70.

A swimmer out of St. Catharines, Ontario, Pound competed at the 1960 Olympic Games in Rome, placing sixth individually in the men’s 100 freestyle before winning four medals at the 1962 British Empire and Commonwealth Games in Perth.

After starting out as the secretary of the Canadian Olympic Committee in 1968, Pound then became the president of the organization from 1977 to 1982, also serving as the Deputy Chef de mission of the Canadian delegation at the 1972 Summer Olympics in Munich.

Joining the IOC in 1978, he twice served on the organization’s executive board, including as vice president from 1987 to 1991 and again from 1996 to 2000.

Throughout the 1980s and 1990s, Pound was the IOC’s leading negotiator in television and marketing rights deals, and is largely credited with helping transform the Olympic landscape into what is today.

Pound then fell short in his bid for IOC presidency in 2001, finishing third in voting as Belgium’s Jacques Rogge took over the post that had been held by Spain’s Juan Antonio Samaranch since 1980.

The vote for IOC president came shortly after Pound led an investigation into IOC members taking bribes over awarding the 2002 Winter Olympics to Salt Lake City. The investigation led to 10 members either resigning or being expelled, which attributed to Pound placing third in voting.

“I knew when I got the Salt Lake City thing I was dead,” Pound said. “People like clean organizations. They don’t like the cleaners.

“I’m not the most sympathetic person in the world. Some of the folks that needed stroked a lot would prefer somebody who is a stroker rather than a doer.”

Under Samaranch’s instructions, Pound founded the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) in 1999.

After an eight-year run as president that included public sparring with cycling star Lance Armstrong, Pound’s tenure as the leader of WADA ended in 2007, though he stayed on its foundation board until 2020.

Pound was never shy about voicing his opinions publicly, which made him a controversial figure and likely also played a part in him not getting elected to IOC president.

In addition to the Armstrong feud, he also came under fire in Canada in November 2005 when he said a third of National Hockey League players were taking some sort of performance-enhancing drugs.

Current IOC president Thomas Bach commended Pound for his “direct and straightforward approach” and called him a man of “untiring inspiration and determination” at the IOC’s session in Lausanne, Switzerland last month.

“You were always able to initiate a lively dispute on many subjects,” Bach told him. “Sometimes some have perceived it has too lively, sometimes some have perceived it as too many, but we all always felt how unwavering your commitment was and is to the Olympic values, to the IOC as an organization and to clean sport.

“This commitment was and is your driving force.”

Pound told CBC that he closed his address to IOC members in Lausanne with the words “bon courage” because they’ll need it in the current climate.

“In an increasingly polarized world, it’s going to be more and more difficult to hold onto your principles, but if you don’t do that, then you’re dead in the water,” he said.