November 19, 2012 (Montreal, QC) – The World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) is now proposing that sanctions for serious, first-time doping offences be increased to four years from the present two years. This proposal, scheduled to take effect in 2015, was contained in a second draft of the new World Anti-Doping Code discussed at a meeting in Montreal this past weekend.

In a conference call with journalists this morning, WADA President John Fahey spoke about how member groups of his organization “overwhelmingly asked for sanctions to be increased [for those caught doping] with substances such as anabolic steroids and human growth hormones.”

Fahey also made repeated references to the “Armstrong Affair” and revealed that WADA closely studied USADA’s reasoned decision against Lance Armstrong. “This was a most comprehensive judgment and no one could doubt that [the reasoned decision] is right,” he said. And Fahey denied that USADA had gone beyond what WADA rules allowed it to do.

During the same conference call, Fahey confirmed a zero-percent funding increase for WADA in 2013. But he said that WADA has sufficient financial reserves to keep doing its work to combat doping, at least in the short term.