This text is part of the special Feminine Leadership notebook
Ben Johnson, Lance Armstrong, Geneviève Jeanson: sports doping scandals have punctuated the news for decades, and scientists are waging an all-out warloose to the multiple substances and tactics used by certain high-level athletes to reach the summits. Christiane Ayotte, director of the Laboratory Control of doping and professor at the INRS-Institut Armand-Frappier since 1991, is at the forefront of this endless fight.
It was first a doctorate in organic chemistry that led her to teach at the University of Montreal in the 1980s. She then completed a postdoctoral fellowship at INRS in the field of mass spectrometry. Around the same time, following scandals in the weightlifting world, the Canadian government began to implement anti-doping tests for international competitions.
That’s when we called on the expertise of Christiane Ayotte. “My work has focused on the detection of steroids by mass spectrometry,” she explains. Everything had to be done, there was practically nothing in the scientific literature, and I had a lot of fun developing this. »
Just before the Los Angeles Games in 1984, the cohort of Canadian athletes was tested, and two weightlifters who obtained positive results were excluded from the Olympic team. “As a young researcher, I was suddenly confronted with the impact of my work,” recalls Christiane Ayotte. It was no longer theoretical work: it could have an impact on someone’s career. There was a moral journey to take, for me. I also discovered that the sporting environment was far from being clean. »
In 1988, the Ben Johnson affair at the Seoul Games marked a turning point in the fight against doping. “It’s an international milestone that shook things up. After Seoul, a commission of inquiry was set up, the Dubin commission. There was an effort to understand and we determined that athletes needed to be tested at all times, not just during competition. The world of sport could no longer hide. »
Organize the fight against doping
Faced with the complexity of setting in motion an anti-doping system on a Canadian and international scale, she became a true activist for rigor, integrity and professional ethics. “As part of our anti-doping laboratory, I wanted the rules to be clear and our work to have integrity and independence,” she says. This is not a job that can be done as a dilettante or with complacency. »
In the 1990s, doping scandals multiplied, particularly in the world of cycling, with Lance Armstrong, the Festina team and erythropoietin (EPO). The Festina scandal led the International Olympic Committee (IOC) and major international sports federations to withdraw from anti-doping administration, leading to the formation of the World Anti-Doping Agency.
At that time, Christiane Ayotte campaigned for its creation as well as for the installation of the head office of this agency in Montreal. “I was convinced that the Agency could not be in Lausanne, as the IOC was. It was too close. There was a need for physical and moral distance. I then went to Europe with Denis Coderre, who was Secretary of State for Sport, to defend Montreal’s candidacy. We went to the meeting in Tallinn, Estonia, where the decision regarding the headquarters of the agency was being taken. I was the only laboratory director on site. There were obviously a lot of political discussions, but from a scientific point of view, I occupied the field. »
Her feminine leadership
For Christiane Ayotte, courage, rigor and integrity are important keys to leadership. “What made me succeed and take my place was ethics and strength of character. And our laboratory has the same ethics. The system which plays the role of doping police must police itself by being rigorous. We do not do our work to please the political authorities. I have often put my head on the chopping block to openly say things that may displease. If I denounce the American agency, which I find complacent, I will not make any friends in the United States,” she explains.
But, for this world authority on sports anti-doping, moral and ethical reason remains primary. “The athletes have suffered enough abuse without adding doping. What we see with the positive cases are athletes who have been deprived of their free will by an organization around them, parents, coaches, doctors, and the higher an athlete goes, the more he becomes a silver pole. It is the protection of the health and integrity of athletes that has always motivated me. »
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