RPT-FEATURE-Doping-Pound proud of WADA's achievements

(Repeats feature first moved at 0002 GMT) (Please note: strong language in paras 14 and 21)

By Steve Keating

MONTREAL, Nov 6 (Reuters) - As the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) prepares to celebrate its 10th anniversary, former chief Dick Pound is proud of what the body has achieved in a decade.

"If you look back at where we were in 1999 and I said to you: 'In five years we will have an up-and-running organisation fully funded by two stakeholder groups, a single set of rules applicable to all countries, all athletes and all sports, an international convention ratified by 130 countries under UNESCO...' you would have said: 'We should go and get you tested, what are you smoking?'," Pound told Reuters.

"As I look back on my failed run to be president of the IOC (International Olympic Committee) I think, in retrospect, I may have been able to do more for the integrity of sport wearing the WADA hat than I would have as president of the IOC."

When WADA opened for business, drugs in sport had already become a worldwide epidemic and fair play was a quaint idea from the past.

Doping was firmly entrenched in the sporting culture, largely tolerated, if not tacitly accepted, by those who competed in everything from cycling's Tour de France to baseball's World Series.

With no meaningful out-of-competition testing, a mish-mash of sanctions and banned substance lists, entrepreneurs such as BALCO mastermind Victor Conte operated in near impunity, pushing out designer steroids faster than tests could be developed to detect them.

In the northern summer of 1998, disturbing images of French police raiding team hotels in search of drugs during the Tour de France were broadcast around the world.

Suddenly doping was an issue that could no longer be ignored and the shocking scenes provided the catalyst for the formation of a world anti-doping agency.

"The European-based international federations realised that there was now a problem when they had watched all these Festina (cycling team) folks arrested and taken to jail," Pound, who headed WADA from its inception in 1999 until 2007, told Reuters in an interview.

"They thought: 'Wow, if this can happen to cycling, which is a really important sport in Europe, and in their blue-ribbon event, then this could happen to us'.

"All of a sudden the question of doping got raised to a new high."

INDEPENDENT BODY

Despite a desire to clean up sport, IOC president Juan Antonio Samaranch had little stomach for a fight, Pound said, and regretted his decision to take on the challenge.

"Samaranch said in the presence of a journalist who was following him around one day: 'This for me is not doping, the list is too long and unless you can prove it damages health it shouldn't be doping'," recalled Pound.

"That got reported, as a result of which everybody said: 'All this crap the IOC has been saying all these years is just that; they don't actually believe in it.

"We had to have an emergency meeting in August 1998 because of all this. We got there and Samaranch looks at us and we looked at him and said: 'Hey this is your fault'.

"I told him now the problem is no one trusts the sports any more, nobody trusts the IOC.