Dick Pound, the former head of the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA), has accused the National Football League Players' Association (NFLPA) of using stalling tactics to block the introduction of tests for human growth hormone (HGH) in America's most popular professional sport.
After years of pressure from anti-doping crusaders and the U.S. government, the NFL and NFLPA finally agreed to start blood testing for HGH when they signed a new collective bargaining agreement in August.
But Pound, an outspoken critic of North American professional sports that have been slow to embrace doping tests and impose punishments, says the players' union was now trying to delay the procedure by wrongly claiming the tests were unreliable.
Pound, one of Canada's members on the International Olympic Committee, says the tests were validated by independent scientists in 2004 and any suggestion they were unreliable was false.
The NFL and NFLPA have yet to respond to Pound's claims.
