New Zealand's anti-doping agency said that there "needs to be a greater focus on the sports scientists advising our top athletes to prevent doping while a code of silence among athletes remains," according to Michael Fox of FAIRFAX NZ NEWS. Drug Free Sport NZ CEO Graeme Steel told MPs Wednesday morning that "while they were making progress when it came to preventing drug use, they were not helped by athletes who chose loyalty to their teammates over the integrity of their sport." Steel: "If what happened in Australia at Cronulla and Essendon, if one person early on said 'this smells and I'm going to tell the right people,' a lot of that could've been nipped in the bud." Steel said there was "no evidence" of an equivalent issue with any sports scientists in New Zealand but this needed to be investigated more thoroughly. He said that anti-doping bodies "were having an impact on the use of performance enhancing drugs." Steel: "We can't ever promise that the international scene will ever be absent doping. What we want to do is say young New Zealand athletes can go through their careers. They can inspire and they can win without doping" (FAIRFAX NZ NEWS, 4/9).
