Following the earthquake caused by the sudden banning in sport of a medicinal called meldonium at the start of the year, resulting in 160 athletes testing positive in the first weeks of its ban, including tennis star Maria Sharapova, serious questions have been raised about procedures and statements in the highest echelons of sport.
WADA, the World Anti-Doping Agency, has a fiduciary duty to carry out research as a basis for its decisions on banning substances and to establish their washout period, the time needed to totally leave the body, to avoid having athletes testing positive as a result of having ingested it in 2015 when it was still allowed. WADA officials have a duty not to comment on individual cases under investigation.
The Russian Minister for Sport Vitaly Mutko had requested data on research carried out by WADA. The Facebook page ‘TennisWatch - Keep Tennis Drug Free’ broke the story on March 31 that in fact there was no such research, and slammed WADA for its unprofessional mishandling of meldonium in a post that went viral. It also stated that WADA was exposing itself to serious liability for damages. WADA have now admitted the lack of research and tried to limit the damage done.
This approach reminds me of the middle or dark ages of witch hunts and inquisitors
Prior to this U-turn, Craig Reedie, president of WADA, had chipped in on the case of Sharapova, going so far as to threaten the International Tennis Federation that WADA will step in if it believes that the ban Sharapova receives is too lenient. “We always have that right,” he said.
Actually he is wrong. WADA do not have such a right. Heaven forbid that the rule of law in sports would degenerate to the point where WADA amasses powers of legislator (deciding on the code and banned substances), prosecutor and judge.
Mr Reedie needs to reread the law. And he should not step into the shoes of the tribunal and ultimately the court of arbitration for sport, and decide on his own, in medieval inquisitor’s style, that an athlete is guilty and that she should not only, in his view, incur a ban, but also a heavy one.
This approach reminds me of the middle or dark ages of witch hunts and inquisitors who were investigators, prosecutors and judges all rolled into one. Every fibre in my legal makeup shudders at the very thought.
It is a serious breach of the rule of law in sports, when an agency tries to exert undue influence on federations, tribunals and courts, and bays for blood, pronouncing a priori a verdict of guilty by default. We should be asking whether such persons are the right people to hold such high office.
Meanwhile WADA needs to answer many other questions, such as:
Why did WADA ignore its own founder’s allegations that American sports were rife with doping, especially its track and field, but then limited its commissioning of the same Mr Pound to just investigate Russian track and field?
Why were all Russian track and field athletes suspended in November, regardless of any evidence of individual wrongdoing? Is this the new rule of law in sports?
Why has WADA not investigated or reported on Eufemiano Fuentes’s statements in a Spanish court that he could identify the athletes whom he assisted in blood doping?
Why did WADA not investigate Dr Fuentes’s other statement that he could explain how Spain obtained a record amount of Olympic medals?
Why did a Spanish Court order the destruction of all the blood bags seized from Dr Feuntes’s clinic, when these would obviously constitute hard forensic evidence of athletes who were cheating?
Why has WADA never investigated the notorious panic room incident of October 27, 2010, when a prominent American tennis player refused to submit an anti-doping sample to a doping control officer, an offence that should have incurred a two-year suspension?
Why did the ITF also fail to immediately attempt once again to obtain a sample, as it was obliged to do pursuant to the WADA regulations?
It is shocking to see athletes risk becoming victims of shoddy regulations, and mere pawns in larger geopolitical power games, while other athletes, officials and institutions remain untouchable.
Before its U-turn on meldonium, TennisWatch highlighted WADA’s exposure to claims for damages by athletes in the event that they might prove in a court of law that their careers have been affected or cut short by WADA’s failure to carry out its fiduciary duties in establishing the washout period for meldonium.
High officials should shoulder their responsibility for this mess before more damage is done, and tender their resignations from WADA. And WADA should take prompt remedial action by wiping the slate clean and dropping all charges for meldonium use by athletes for the first two months of 2016.
Since TennisWatch’s call in its Facebook post of March 31, Reedie has come around, and WADA have now announced that it is looking to provide an amnesty to athletes whose tests show less than one microgram of meldonium.
Is this enough? If research has not been carried out, how can WADA arbitrarily set this one microgram threshold?
This appears to be yet another unprofessional knee-jerk reaction as a desperate attempt at damage limitation following this scoop on lack of proper research.
Now President Putin has even declared on Russian TV that meldonium “doesn’t influence the result. That’s totally certain”.
The manufacturers are declaring the same thing. The CEO of racquet manufacturer Head, Johan Eliasch, has also stated that: “Until clinical testing is undertaken to prove that meldonium has indeed performance-enhancing potential, WADA should provide amnesty to athletes who had been taking the drug at the direction of a doctor for a proven medical condition, if not all athletes.”
Mr Eliasch has a point. Now that WADA officials have admitted lack of research for meldonium, the agency needs to declare a full amnesty.
If not it might be their own heads that would roll rather than the athletes’.
Rodolfo Ragonesi runs the Facebook page TennisWatch, which provides information and legal analysis of issues relating to doping and match-fixing in tennis