Richard “Dick” Pound, is a Canadian swimming champion, lawyer and prominent spokesman for ethics in sport. He was the first president of the World Anti-Doping Agency and vice-president of the International Olympic Committee.
At the beginning of his sporting journey, there was his successful swimming career that saw him become four-time Canadian national freestyle champion, as well as butterfly champion. Internationally, he represented Canada at the 1960 Olympics, and won four medals at the 1962 Commonwealth games.
But it’s his ground-breaking work post-competition that has seen him become as revered as he is today. During his presidency at WADA, he became synonymous with anti-doping, and in 2015, he led a ground-breaking investigation that uncovered the details of an institutionalized doping scheme within Russian athletics, which led to the Russian Anti-Doping Agency being declared non-compliant with the World Anti-Doping Code, paving the way for the biggest sporting scandal of modern times: the Russian Doping Crisis.
TIME magazine featured Dick as one of the "100 Most Influential People in the World", and current WADA President Witold Banda states “everyone who loves sport and who cherishes the values of fair play, owes a lot to Dick and what he has achieved”.