New Wada president Sir Craig Reedie reveals how he will tackle the growing problem of drug cheats Yet, the Wada presidency has been about anything but winning friends since the agency came into being 14 years ago. Dick Pound, and then John Fahey, each cast themselves as Eliot Ness, painting a black-and-white world of good and evil in which you were either with them or with the dopers. Sitting down to talk to Reedie at the scene of his election, the Sandton Convention Centre in Johannesburg's most genteel suburb, it is immediately clear that, come Jan 1, the rhetoric at the top of Wada is set to change. "My instincts throughout all of my sports career has been rather more consensual than combative," Reedie told Telegraph Sport. And while that may have not been the right approach for Wada in the past, it could just be the way forward for an organisation that, as well as electing Reedie on Friday, introduced its most demanding rules yet. Athletes, national anti-doping organisations, national Olympic committees and international federations have barely a year to get up to speed with the new Wada Code, which takes effect from 2015. And whereas complying with their current responsibilities is considered straightforward enough - justifying condemnation of Jamaica and Kenya's failure to do so - the complexity and cost of implementing the latest iteration means there are bound to be those who need a helping hand rather than a slapped wrist. "I see my role to be rather more to get everybody to be working together, rather than to be telling people, 'You must do this or we will penalise you'," Reedie added. The issue will arise on compliance, and we need to get our act together to make sure as many people sail through that exercise as we can. Even the ultimate doping demon, Lance Armstrong, elicits some sympathy from Reedie, who is not blind to the shades of grey in even the darkest of deceptions. "I actually can't quite make up my mind," he says of the prospect of the disgraced cyclist being given any kind of clemency for coming clean over the sport's drugs epidemic. It would be a mistake, however, to confuse Reedie's ability to see both sides of a story with being soft on drugs, which he describes as "the biggest current threat to the validity of Olympic sport." The Scot was instrumental in drawing up the controversial BOA bylaw which prevented convicted dopers representing Britain at future Olympics, something that was ultimately overturned. So it was with some satisfaction that he witnessed Wada wave through on Friday four-year bans for first-time offenders, effectively forcing them to miss a Games. "It's all come together in probably a rather more enforceable and certain manner," he said. Enforcement also costs money and that is something that has been in woefully short supply at Wada, which this week suffered its fourth successive real-terms budget cut. As chairman of its finance committee, it is perhaps no surprise he sees seeking new sources of funding as one of his first priorities. Wada will be given £16.4 million next year by governments and the IOC but Reedie believes non-Olympic sports could be convinced to contribute in a way that would at least double that figure. "People keep saying that the whole of sport and the sports business generates billions and billions of dollars and Wada operates on an annual budget of a fraction of a top athlete's income," he said. So there is a lot of money out there. I think it's a question of identifying where it is and whether, even before you start, you think it might be possible to encourage people to pass some of it your way. Reedie's quiet powers of persuasion got badminton into the Commonwealth Games and Olympics, helped win London the 2012 Games, got himself appointed to the IOC executive and now elected Wada president. It almost begs the question, what next? "As far I'm concerned, this is it," he said. This is the last big job that I will do in sport.