The Role of Sports Bodies and Organized Crime

Abstract

To fully understand the market relationships among the suppliers of doping products, we focus in the fifth chapter on two very different sets of actors. The first ones are officials of national sports bodies, including in this expression both the Italian National Olympic Committee (CONI) and sports federations. As seen in the third chapter, during the 1980s and 1990s, officials of sports federations occasionally distributed doping products directly to elite athletes of some disciplines, most notably track and field and weightlifting. Most often, though, CONI and sports federations officials have “merely” provided protection to doping elite athletes and the latter’s suppliers of doping products or have not exercised their supervisory and control functions with due diligence. In doing so, Italian sports body officials often did not behave any differently than their foreign or international counterparts, as several examples suggest. On more than one occasion, moreover, Italian sports body officials enjoyed the support of successive Italian governments.