IOC and WADA ignored ‘several’ positive doping tests from 2008 Olympics, report says

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The International Olympic Committee and the World Anti-Doping Agency failed to follow their regular protocols after finding a banned substance in several samples provided by Jamaican athletes who competed in the 2008 Olympics in Beijing, according to a new report from German television station ARD.

Reported by the same network that also broke the story about Russia’s alleged government-sanctioned doping program, the report alleges some of the samples in question belong to “the Caribbean island’s male sprinters.” The report did not name names.

The IOC admitted as much to ARD, stating “a number of cases of athletes from a number of countries and from a number of different sports” had tested positive for “very low levels of clenbuterol,” a steroid that’s been banned since 1992. The positive tests were discovered during the IOC’s reanalysis of samples undertaken last year in response to the Russian doping scandal.

The IOC, however, justified not following up on the failed tests by claiming the athletes in question were innocent, and that their samples became tainted through routine consumption of “contaminated meat.” Clenbuterol was often administered to animals in China as a fattening additive in 2008, ARD reports.

WADA, meanwhile, told ARD it also was “aware” of the failed tests, but decided to follow the IOC’s course to ignore its usual protocol after IOC chalked up the failed tests to the athletes having consumed it via food.

“Of course this is not great,” WADA Director General Olivier Niggli told ARD. “Because if you’re cheating, if you are a cheater, you have a perfect excuse [with contaminated meat] if you get caught. But that’s where we are.”

The ARD report gave three reasons to cast doubt on the IOC’s explanation that the Jamaican athletes in question ended up with the substance in their samples through food.

First, the report states Olympic organizers knew of the Chinese meat industry’s use of clenbuterol and took efforts to ensure the food served at Olympic Village, where the athletes reside during the games, did not contain the substance.

Second, ARD pointed out the IOC previously did not buy the excuse of ingesting the substance through meat when Polish canoeist Adam Seroczynski, who tested positive for the steroid shortly after competing in the 2008 games, tried to use it. Seroczynski was eventually banned for two years.

And third, ARD tracked down a well-known drug dealer known for supplying doping agents to athletes in the Caribbean during that time period and he said he “100 percent” believed some members of the Jamaican team knowingly took the substance for performance-enhancing purposes.

“There were plenty of questions from Jamaican coaches [contacting and] asking me [. . .] if clenbuterol was good for sprinting,” Angel Heredia said. “They have asked me since very long, even years before that, they asked me how clenbuterol was good for sprinters and they were asking me questions how to use it. And whether it was good for sprinting, for recovering and all this stuff. Basically clenbuterol, [. . .] they used it a lot for recovery, for increasing their oxygen intake, you know, for anti-asthmatic properties.”

Neither Jamaica’s Olympic committee nor the country’s athletics governing body returned The Washington Post’s request to comment.

If pursued further, the ramifications of the ARD report could be devastating for the Jamaican team, and its sprinters in particular, who took home 11 medals in the track and field competition.

Already, one of those medals was stripped from Jamaica when Nesta Carter, one of the members of the winning 4×100 team, was dinged for having the banned stimulant methylhexaneamine in his sample. As a result, famed sprinter Usain Bolt also lost his gold medal for the event.

(c) 2017, The Washington Post · Marissa Payne

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