Knowledge bank: Julio Grondona is said to be the man behind Sepp Blatter, the president of FIFA.

The U.S. Balco affair consisted of a systematic and calculated method to circomvent sports drug testing rules by using sophisticated and oftentimes undetecable performance enhancing substances.

Italian anti-doping fighter and Head of Research at the Italian Olympic Committee (CONI) Sandro Donati returned to the Play the Game with a strong appeal to global regulatory bodies and law enforcement agencies to recognise the huge scale of the illegal doping trade – and step up efforts to combat it.

The involvement of organised crime in illegal trafficking of doping is a growing problem. Yet governments and international institutions have done very little to combat the problem or get the pharmaceutical companies to stop the conscious over production of drugs with doping potential.