Anti-dopers wrestle with paying informants to break sports’ code of silence

PARIS – Anti-doping organisations are torn over a suggestion from the director general of the International Cycling Union (ICU) to pay sports insiders to inform on their rivals or colleagues.

“We need information from the peloton. We need Radio Peloton,” Amina Lanaya told a French newspaper earlier this year.

To fight what she called “a form of omerta” in her sport she said the UCI needed to “infiltrate the peloton, infiltrate certain teams, pay for ‘grasses’.”

Paid criminal informants are a staple of police work in many countries, but Lanaya’s suggestion that sport adopts the same approach has led to debate in the anti-doping community, even as…