Richard W. Pound is the founder and chair of the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA), an independent foundation created in 1999 to promote and coordinate the fight against doping in sport internationally. In 2005, he was named by TIME magazine as one of the TIME 100, the world's 100 most influential people. TIME called "the relentless Dick Pound" the "prime mover in freeing the Olympic world from the taint of illicit, performance-enhancing drugs, and he isn't going to stop until he has all the world's sports in the tent." Pound has been a member of the International Olympic Committee (IOC) for over 25 years and has served as a member of the IOC Executive Board, vice-president, and acting president. He was also Chairman of the IOC Television Negotiation Committee (1983-2001), and Chairman of the IOC Marketing Committee until 2001, in the process making the IOC one of the most successful sport organizations in the world. He served as the Chair of the Coordination Commission for the 1996 Olympic Games, and as a director of the Organizing Committee for the 1988 Olympic Winter Games in Calgary, Alberta. It was partly because of Pound's investigation of the Salt Lake City bribery scandal that new regulations and an ethics watchdog to oversee interaction between IOC members and bidding cities were created. He is a past president, director, and executive committee member of the Canadian Olympic Committee. Born in Canada in 1942, Pound began his athletic career as a competitive swimmer. At the 1960 Olympic Games in Rome, he was a double Olympic finalist, finishing fourth in the 400 meter medley relay and sixth in the 100 meter freestyle. He went on to win four medals-a gold, a bronze, and two silvers-at the 1962 Commonwealth Games in Australia. Pound was educated in Montreal, receiving degrees in commerce and law from McGill. He is currently a partner in the law firm Stikeman Elliott. In 1999, he was made the seventeenth chancellor of McGill University.
