Oiling the wheels of the Games

With London staking its claim to host the 2012 games, this is a busy time for the British Olympic Association in-house lawyer and with Athens on the horizon, there is no let up in the raft of issues, such as drugs testing, that need addressing, reports Jeremy Fleming.

'It was a dream ticket - being able to combine your passion and career,' Sara Friend says of the time two years ago when - as an assistant solicitor with Baker & McKenzie in the City - she saw an ad for the in-house position at the British Olympic Association (BOA).

'And I thought after spending so many sleepless nights up watching the Sydney Olympics, next time I may as well be there.

And now I will be,' she adds.

When she bagged one of the most envied in-house positions in the country, Ms Friend had around four years' post-qualification experience in the litigation department, where she mostly carried out international commercial arbitrations.

A New Zealander born and bred, she left aged 17, spent a year in Canada and two years in Hong Kong, and arrived in the UK in 1990 where she completed university and law school.

She joined the BOA in February 2001, replacing Robert Datnow, another litigator - hired from City firm Linklaters - whose switch to the BOA as legal director saw him attend the 2000 Sydney Olympics as the youngest BOA board member and political liaison officer (see [2000] Gazette, 7 September, 26).

Mr Datnow left to concentrate on his own sporting passion.

He is a middle-distance runner and a part-time manager of Thames Valley Harriers.

He has since resurfaced as an assistant at the BOA's partner law firm Farrer & Co

One of the huge issues at the BOA for the past year has, of course, been London's bid for the 2012 Olympics.

Ms Friend says a lot of her time has been spent on the bid company (BidCo) - the corporate vehicle that will organise staging the bid once it is up and running - in conjunction with the other key stakeholders - the government and Greater London Authority (GLA).

This work has involved the mixed bag of property, joint venture agreements, company documentation, trademark and domain name protection issues.

She says: 'I'm not doing it all but I've got my eye on it all.'

In fact, now that the American former boss of budget airline Go, Barbara Cassani, has been appointed chairwoman of BidCo, she will now be able to take some of those matters over to that company.

'The BOA will have representatives sitting on the board but [BidCo] will operate at arm's length,' Ms Friend says.

Therefore, while at the moment Ms Friend is in the middle of the three stakeholders, getting the company up and running, as soon as that happens her focus will revert to next year's Athens Olympics.

She explains: 'At the moment, my time is divided.

But there will always be obligations on BidCo that the BOA will advise and help on, mainly compliance with the strict International Olympic Committee (IOC) rules and regulations on national Olympic committees and their bid companies.

So I am sure that BidCo matters will not disappear off my "to do" list for the foreseeable future.'

Ms Friend's role has expanded to encompass public affairs.

She will assist an all-party Olympic group in Parliament, and she will probably continue to be part of various working groups behind the bid, evaluating the establishment of an organising committee and a potential parliamentary bill to deal with an Olympic lottery.

However, with the spotlight on London's bid Ms Friend says people may have forgotten that the Athens Olympics are only slightly more than a year away.

She has been working on the draft team members' agreement, and the qualifying standard agreements have been negotiated (by the technical performance people she works with) and put into agreements with each of the individual sports authorities.

She has been drawing up and finalising agreements for the British training centre - Team GB will be holding its main preparation and acclimatisation camp in Cyprus.

She has also dealt with a handful of sponsorship, supply and licence agreements at various stages, and helped the BOA Athletes' Commission on a reorganisation of its structure.

She says: 'Generally, preparations for Athens are going very well.

It will be magical to return to the home of the modern Olympics.

There has been a lot of negative press but my colleagues who have recently returned say that things are really starting to come together in some quarters and we're confident it will be great by 13 August 2004, which is the opening ceremony.'

She acknowledges that there are already some signs of 'ambush marketing activity' and illegal ticket sales and promotions matters to fend off.

The ticketing is causing particular worries.

Traditionally, the IOC has been able to enforce strict boundary divisions world-wide for ticket sales, with no cross-border sales allowed.

European law has meant a change to this but the European Commission has approved the Athens ticketing policy and all EU countries are allotted a quota.

But it is strictly against EU regulations to prohibit sale of tickets to citizens of other EU countries.

Therefore a Briton or German can purchase tickets from each other's country so long as he is not doing so for resale.

But with ticket sales increasingly occurring over the Internet, it is harder to judge whether individuals are attempting to resell, or use tickets in promotions - both of which are against the terms and conditions of the ticket sales.

Ms Friend says the BOA has already seen evidence of potential Internet reselling of Olympic tickets before any tickets have even been released.

Internet ticket selling is not the only area where the modern world is complicating the job of the BOA's in-house lawyer.

Issues of substance, such as drugs testing, have also changed since the last games.

Ms Friend says: 'The biggest challenge in the fight against doping is that the unscrupulous medics are one step ahead of the scientists who are developing the detection methods.

EPO was around for years before a reliable method of detection could be introduced at the Sydney Olympics.'

The next challenge will be gene manipulation - the replacement or enhancement of an athlete's genes with genes created for specific purposes, such as strength or endurance.

Ms Friend says: 'There is no illegal substance in the bodily fluids, blood or urine, to detect - so how can the fight against gene manipulation start?'

As well as these fears, Mr Friend has been considering issues for implementing the World Anti-Doping Administration's code, which will be put in place before the start of the Athens Olympics.

She says: 'The introduction of the code has us all a little bit in the dark about what changes we're going to see to the doping programme in Athens.'

But she has experience on how to deal with doping issues, having dealt with the Alain Baxter case.

Mr Baxter looked to have won Britain's first-ever ski medal when he finished third in the men's slalom at the 2002 Salt Lake City winter Olympics, but was stripped of his bronze medal after failing a drugs test, despite arguing that the banned substance had come from the US version of a Vicks nasal inhaler.

Ms Friend says: 'The crisis management team when we first were notified of the positive test were the [BOA's] chairman and chief executive, the team doctor, the press officer and myself.' Ms Friend worked from London while the games were in progress.

She says it was vital to not let the press get hold of the story for as long as possible, 'although actually at the Athens Games that will be harder'.

She says: 'With Baxter, he and the team had arrived back in the UK the day before we found out, so the press didn't pick up on it until we did a press statement four days later.

This was after we had had initial meetings with Alain and a legal team and got Alain out of the country away from the press.'

Because Mr Baxter's test result came through after the games, the team had 12 days to prepare his case before the IOC inquiry and disciplinary commissions.

She adds: 'At the Athens Games, that will all happen within 24 to 36 hours from start to finish.'

Following the finding, Ms Friend helped organise Mr Baxter's appeal to the Swiss-based Court of Arbitration for Sport, which ruled last October that he was a 'sincere and honest man who did not gain a competitive advantage, despite the trace of lev-methamphetamine in his system'.

The court nevertheless upheld the IOC's original decision to strip him of the medal because of the ruling body's strict liability rule.

So, will Ms Friend be eventually aspiring to pursue sport more actively, like her predecessor? It seems not.

But she is an avid follower of 'almost anything especially when it's at an elite level'.

She loves watching live sport - tennis, cricket, rugby, athletics - 'even football', although she suggests that 'the UK is very football-focused, to the detriment of many other sports'.

She adds: 'I went to "live" swimming for the first time at the Commonwealth Games and it was fantastic.

The atmosphere and seeing Ian Thorpe race were incredible.'

She says one of the problems with the job will eventually be knowing when to stop.

There are few other jobs where every two years of one's career marks a notch in the form of a huge international sports competition.

After Athens there will be the Turin winter games in 2006, the Beijing Olympics in 2008.

If all these have not provided enough stimulus for a lawyer, there is then the prospect of the 2012 Olympics, which of course might be held in Havana, Istanbul, Leipzig, London, New York, Madrid, Moscow, Paris or Rio de Janeiro.

With a background as a litigator, Ms Friend will doubtless enjoy her ringside seat as these heavyweights slug it out.

Farrer & Co spearheads Olympic effort with exclusive deal

Jeremy Fleming looks at the leading players who will get Britain's bid to stage the 2012 Olympics up and running

London firm Farrer & Co's appointment as the BOA's official partner means the firm - which has a 50-year association with the Olympics - will act exclusively for the association in relation to the London bid.

James Thorne, a partner in the corporate department, says: 'We've had a long and close relationship with the BOA since before the 1948 Olympics.

We are keen to support the bid, which will be tremendously good for the sports sector as a whole.'

The links between the two were strengthened earlier this year by the arrival at Farrer & Co of the BOA's former in-house lawyer, Robert Datnow.

But apart from work for the BOA there are plenty of other instructions relating to the bid flying around the City.

Perhaps the tastiest of these has been bagged by City firm Ashurst Morris Crisp, which is to be the adviser to BidCo - once it has been formed.

Partner Jan Sanders will take the lead at Ashursts.

BidCo's work is likely to encompass the construction, marketing and intellectual property work involved in an Olympic bid.

This will give the firm a lot of work on the bid and a good chance of being retained as the adviser to the Olympic organising committee in the event that a bid is successful.

Wragge & Co - somewhat surprisingly, since the firm is determinedly Birmingham-based, though it has a London office - has taken the role of adviser to the Greater London Authority in relation to the bid, while Denton Wilde Sapte has won instructions from the Department for Culture, Media and Sport.

Miranda Ramphul, Denton Wilde Sapte's client partner for the Treasury Solicitor, was provisionally instructed on the deal at the end of February this year, subject to a final decision on the government's support for a bid, which was announced on 15 May.