Global sporting bodies voiced wide support for more stringent punishment of athletes who use banned performance-enhancers as they discussed revised rules at a conference today.
Delegates welcomed longer bans for athletes caught doping intentionally, which will pass from two years to four when the new anti-doping code comes into effect in 2015.
But surprisingly powerful global athletics body the IAAF called for even harder crackdowns on culprits, signalling "clean" athletes frustrations that dopers sometimes go free amid low numbers of abnormal tests.
"The theme that came through time and time again, is we are working for the clean athletes of the world," said outgoing World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) president John Fahey after a second day of discussions.
"The overwhelming majority of athletes who made submissions... Made it abundantly clear that a more severe penalty was what they wanted," Fahey told journalists.
FIFA backed four-year bans, but said doping risks were lower with fewer possible drugs and the global footballing body's extensive screening programmes.
"We have nothing against that civil violation of the anti-doping regulations are sanctioned by four years," FIFA chief medical officer Jiri Dvorak told AFP.
"Let's put it in the perspective. In football, we have somewhere between five to eight anabolic steroids caes a year so it's not really a huge number."
For the past three years FIFA has built up biological passports of sportsmen -- a database of tests which helps to detect deviations outside normal levels in each individual.
The football body will continue to do this for the World Cup in Brazil next year, flying samples to Lausanne in Switzerland after WADA revoked the accreditation of the laboratory in Rio da Janeiro.
American anti-doping agency USADA was also in favour of stringent punishments, a year after it handed a lifetime ban to fallen cycling hero Lance Armstrong.
"We support what clean athletes support," USADA CEO Travis Tygart told AFP, adding that some sports people had called for life bans in general, but later came down to four years.
