The World Anti-Doping Agency responded in harsh terms to a Reuters report in which they claimed that WADA and the United States Anti-Doping Agency together allowed athletes with adverse analytical results to compete even if they had positive doping results. WADA responded that they were not part of this scheme, but that USADA omitted the information and used the athletes as “undercover agents” to investigate and discover other possible doping.
As published by WADA, USADA avoided sanctioning athletes with positive results, contravening international rules and allowing them to continue competing. Furthermore, these exams were not published. “This USADA scheme threatened the integrity of sporting competition, which the Code seeks to protect. By operating it, USADA clearly violated the rules. Contrary to USADA’s claims, WADA did not condone this practice of allowing cheaters to compete. for years with the promise that they would try to obtain incriminating evidence against others,” they published in a statement.
Furthermore, WADA indicated that in 2021 it learned of this action from USADA and that it was immediately banned. Of course, they do note that there were cases in which athletes had positive results, but whose publication was omitted to favor new investigations in search of discovering new cases of offending athletes.
“In one case, an elite athlete, who competed in international and Olympic qualifying events in the United States, admitted to taking steroids and EPO, but was allowed to continue competing until his retirement. His case was never published, the results never were disqualified, the prize money was never returned and no suspension was ever served,” the WADA published. “The athlete was allowed to line up against his unknown competitors as if they had never cheated. In that case, when USADA finally admitted to WADA what had been happening, they warned that any publication of the consequences or disqualification of the results would put into question. risked the athlete’s safety and asked WADA to accept the non-publication. Finding itself in this impossible position, WADA had no choice but to accept (after verifying with its Intelligence and Investigations Department that the security threat was credible. “Therefore, the athlete’s doping was never made public,” added the World Anti-Doping Agency.
The note published by WADA had a harsh closure against the US agency. “It is ironic and hypocritical for USADA to cry foul when it suspects other anti-doping organizations of not following the rules to the letter while not announcing doping cases for years and allowing cheaters to continue competing, just in case they could help them catch others. possible infringers,” the statement concluded.
