BY STEPHEN WILSON

AP Sports Writer

LONDON--Dick Pound has spent eight years challenging, confronting and cajoling sports bodies and governments to crack down on doping. Star athletes, pro leagues and sports administrators have all felt the sting of his broadsides.

So, as Pound prepares to step aside as president of the World Anti-Doping Agency, don't expect him to back off or show a softer side toward the drug cheats or his critics.

"You think we'd be where we are today if we all sat around holding hands going 'om, om, om'?" he told The Associated Press in a telephone interview. "This has something that has the capacity to destroy sport, and nobody else was prepared to do much about it."

Pound will preside over the Third World Conference on Doping in Sport in Madrid, Spain, which opens tomorrow and runs through Saturday. It will be his swan song as delegates approve a revised set of global anti-doping rules and elect former Australian politician John Fahey to succeed him as head of the Montreal-based world body.

Pound, a Canadian lawyer, has led WADA since its creation in 1999. He has overseen efforts to harmonize anti-doping rules across all sports and countries and to increase government involvement in the war against performance-enhancing drugs.

"More people are now aware of the existence of the problem and the extent of the problem and the degree to which it destroys everything that sports should stand for," Pound said. "I think even the professional sports leagues and cycling are really on their back feet now. They're not able to get away with all the fluff they've been hoisting on the public for so long."

The Madrid conference comes near the close of another tumultuous year in doping, which included the stripping of Floyd Landis' 2006 Tour de France title and a confession by five-time Olympic medalist Marion Jones that she used banned substances.

Pound has had public spats with seven-time Tour champion Lance Armstrong, international cycling officials and the NFL, NHL and Major League Baseball. He insists his outspoken, in-your-face approach is necessary to get people's attention.