The host is under the weather this evening. Witold Banka, the president of the World Anti-Doping Agency (Wada), croaks his greeting to the group before assuring: “Don’t worry, it’s really me, not artificial intelligence.” It is the only moment in the next two hours in which Banka or one of his Wada colleagues who are connected makes a joke.
It is rare for Wada to ask the world press for an unscheduled question and answer session. Similar events took place around ten years ago, when state-protected doping in Russia had just been exposed. At that time, Wada was able to point out that it had at least put its investigators on the trail, and they had uncovered a lot. Now the agency has been on the defensive for days: 23 swimmers from China’s highly decorated selection tested positive for a cardiac stimulant shortly before the 2021 Olympics, but were still allowed to shine at the Games in Tokyo – because WADA, the highest global anti-doping authority -Instance, had not intervened decisively, as new research by ARD and New York Times suggest?
On Monday, the WADA president brought together all the leading figures in his agency to refute this theory: Director General Olivier Niggli, General Counsel Ross Wenzel, Director of Science Olivier Rabin, and Günter Younger, the former Bavarian police officer and now head of the in-house investigation unit. The lecture began, the Chinese Anti-Doping Agency (Chinada) registered 28 positive tests for the heart drug trimetazidine (TMZ) from 23 of its swimmers in January 2021, around a national competition in Shijiazhuang. Chinada quickly suspected that contamination must be to blame: because the affected athletes came from different regions, so there were no patterns according to training groups; Also, only those who stayed in the same hotel were positive – athletes from another hotel were not affected. Lo and behold: An investigation by China’s National Police, an arm of state surveillance, found TMZ traces in spice containers and extractor hoods at the 23 swimmers’ hotel. Bingo.
This examination, like all profiles of the urine samples, the Wada experts repeated again and again, was carefully examined, with independent expertise. The concentration of TMZ was about so low, one trillionth per milligram, that it does not match comparable TMZ doping cases (although head of science Rabin also emphasized that each case had to be looked at individually). Some of the athletes who tested positive also gave samples in quick succession; some were first negative, then positive or vice versa – this does not indicate intentional intake either. The conclusion that the legal advisor Wenzel repeatedly made: “We had no evidence.” In other words: to refute the Chinese thesis.
How did the heart medication get into the hotel kitchen? Nobody knows that to this day
The longer the question round lasted, the more shaky the Wada theses stood on. Why didn’t Chinada provisionally ban 23 of its star athletes after testing positive for a hard doping substance, as required by protocol? Instead, the athletes continued swimming until June, just before the Olympics, before safety authorities established the contamination theory. Travis Tygart, the head of the US Anti-Doping Agency, called this an “egregious failure” that destroyed all trust. WADA now emphasized that Chinada’s decision could only have been attacked retrospectively – but by then it was clear that the athletes had unintentionally consumed the substance, see: the contaminated hotel kitchen.
But was it really that clear? The head of science, Rabin, in particular, was thrown into a tailspin when his ARD colleagues pointed out to him that doping athletes can sometimes submit positive and sometimes negative results with amounts at the detection threshold – depending on how hydrated they are, for example. No, Rabin evaded, the amounts would not suggest doping, for example because the dosages were too low to have a performance-enhancing effect. Which in turn ignored the fact that such athletes could be at the end of a dosing cycle.
When the Wada group was then presented with cases such as that of figure skater Kamila Valiyeva, who had been banned for four years because of a small dose of TMZ, the lawyer Wenzel repeatedly retreated to the same argument: Valiyeva, as in other alleged cases Contamination cases, cannot name a source. Or rather: no state security apparatus that just found traces in the hotel kitchen.
However, Wenzel admitted, even this apparatus had offered no reason as to how the TMZ traces got there. Rabin said a hotel employee may have crushed a pill and traces of it could have gotten into the food – he thought that was plausible. When asked, Rabin was unable to name any case in which TMZ contamination had been plausibly discussed (A recent Russian study that casts doubt on the performance-enhancing effects of TMZ mentions two cases). Ultimately, a reporter interjected, everything depends on the fact that one has to believe a report from the Chinese authorities, who, months after 23 swimmers were treated in an allegedly contaminated (and since then cleaned) hotel kitchen, found traces of a powerful heart medication there .
Well, said Wenzel, his face already slightly red, as a lawyer he had to rely on evidence. Even if they come from China’s security apparatus.
Günter Younger, the German chief investigator at WADA, later had an interesting theory ready: If the Chinese had wanted to cover something up, would they have reported the tests as positive at all? You knew what this would cause. Well, perhaps they had also assumed that a government-investigated hotel kitchen in Shijiazhuang was a more pliable solution at a time when the borders were closed due to the pandemic. Hadn’t Younger’s department once proven to the Russians that that they had massively manipulated a database from the Moscow anti-doping laboratory?
The words of athlete representatives like the German fencer Lea Krüger (“a slap in the face of all clean athletes”) sounded more and more coherent the longer the evening lasted. And also that of the German NADA boss Lars Mortsiefer, who said on Monday that WADA should reopen the case. And the fact that WADA applies “double standards” when it comes to temporary closures leaves us somewhat perplexed, he said.
Are 23 swimmers in one fell swoop the A little too much of a good thing for aspiring sporting nations?
On Monday, WADA President Witold Banka referred to Chinese cases that had previously been sanctioned, but otherwise defended every millimeter of the approach. And China’s authorities? Quickly resort to Trumpian vocabulary. The media reports, they said, were “fake news.”