Action against sports cheats

Since the first Olympics in ancient Greece, sportsmen and women have offered bribes or taken drugs to try to beat the system and win coveted prizes. By the 1950s, cyclists and other athletes were taking amphetamines to improve their results and over the years new performance-enhancing drugs were making it possible for cheats to win. The Council of Europe’s Committee of Ministers had already acted in 1967 to produce the first international legal text to combat doping. The 1989 Anti-Doping Convention followed, aiming to make it harder to obtain and use banned substances such as anabolic steroids, brought in regular doping controls both during and between competitions and ensured that governments funded sports organisations in their attempts to stop the practice. Council of Europe experts also work closely with the World Anti Doping Agency. See more on the Council of Europe’s work on sport.

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