WADA announces that it will start targeting “Entourages” of Athletes

I had mentioned previously in my blog a couple of months ago that it is important to find out who is taking performance enhancing drugs among athletes, but it is more important to get those that are supplying and helping them get these drugs in the first place.  It was announced today that the World Anti-Doping Agency will start focusing on those in the athlete’s “entourages”, which can include coaches, trainers, and others.  WADA and USADA have targeted coaches recently, like in the Trevor Graham case.

I would say that this is a positive move in the right direction for WADA.  Athletes are not always the person that gets the performance enhancing drugs for themselves, but they do have their coaches, or “friends” of their coaches to get these drugs to these athletes.  If a coach has a reputation for having athletes improve all of the sudden on a consistent basis, and they have “friends” in certain places– it is time to get them out of the sport.  Period.  The people that are willing to do whatever it takes to make their athlete better, and if that means taking steroids or drugs– they need to be punished as well– and these individuals need to be exposed as well to the public.