WHO QUESTIONS these days that sport has become big business? For good or for evil, television rights, sponsorship monies, licensing revenues, merchandising profits, ticket receipts, all of these have given sport, this most beloved of human pastimes, a new material dimension. Athletes participating in major international competitions are no longer amateurs whose anxious parents cheer from the front row of the stadium bleachers; they are in most cases sports professionals who are managed by sophisticated agents, promoters and trainers with extensive public relations advisers and logistical back-up. If a professional athlete is disqualified, barred from future competition, or fined, it can mean the end of his or her professional career and severe financial consequences, as shown by the Diane Modahl case in England. At the same time, the athlete who engages in doping can discredit an entire sport discipline. One need only look at the drug scandals surrounding the Tour de France of recent years. Dieter Baumann, the German long-distance runner, whose toothpaste was found to be laced with a prohibited anabolic steroid, is the most recent example of an athlete fighting for his reputation, if not financial survival. At least in Germany, Baumann can look back on the milestones set by other athletes in charting his legal strategy. Guilty or innocent, he will be able to stand upon a fragile, but nevertheless existing framework of judicial precedents pronounced by the German civil courts and the Court of Arbitration for Sport. Whether he brings his case to the civil courts remains to be seen. I hope not. The case is a matter which should be resolved by independent sports arbitration. But what are the advantages if Baumann and the national and international federations which govern track, and field competition were to decide to resolve their dispute in this manner? These …