April Henning1 and Jörg Krieger2
1 Heriot-Watt University; 2 University of Aarhus
What is left to do in anti-doping research? This was the question we, as the directors of the International Network of Doping Research, asked ourselves and our colleagues two years ago. It was the theme of our 2022 conference, where international experts discuss research on the political, cultural, and social dimensions of doping in an independent setting.
It appeared that the humanities and social sciences had little more to contribute, as years of evidence and recommendations were falling on deaf ears. Many scholars who had explored the doping phenomenon for decades, concluded that the current anti-doping system is severely flawed but we seemed to be at a dead end. The use of performance enhancing substances has been customary in elite sport since the late nineteenth century. Sport officials tied anti-doping efforts to the “spirit of sport” as they desperately tried to protect amateur principles in sport. During the Cold War, regimes on both sides of the Iron Curtain outmaneuvered doping regulations. Today, severe challenges around strict liability, surveillance, contamination, amateur athletes, and spiking remain. Things had changed little.
The revelations from the past weekend about the 23 Chinese swimmers who tested positive in the run up to the delayed 2021 Summer Olympics for trimetazidine (TMZ), a banned heart drug used to improve endurance, showed just how far from fine things were. To our academic community, the fact that elite athletes had tested positive for a doping substance is not that uncommon or even unexpected, particularly not from China. In light of state-controlled doping in Russia, the reach of private doping initiatives in the United States, or the national doping crisis in Kenya, many researchers strongly suspected that doping was also widespread in China. So how did it still go so wrong? How could this have been prevented?
However, it could also be that WADA simply felt that they made the correct decisions to trust China – who counts a member of its national Olympic Committee as a WADA Vice President, setting up a potential conflict of interest – as they indicated in their press conference in response to the scandal.
The short answer to both questions is governance. Governance is the way an organisation is run, including its structures, policies, and procedures that are controlled and overseen by a governing body, often called a board. In WADA’s case, it is run by a Foundation Board and has produced a whole set of policies and procedures that govern every part of the anti-doping chain laid out in its Code and International Standards documents. WADA is very clear that they are in the business of integrity and openness in the pursuit of ensuring doping-free sport to protect athlete rights to compete in doping-free sport. In the recent case involving the Chinese swimmers, it seems that there was a breakdown within WADA around following its own rules at almost every step.
News reports suggest that none of the athletes were provisionally suspended upon the initial positive test and none of the names were made public, both of which should have happened after the athletes were notified of the positive tests. Strict liability, that premise that underpins the entire World Anti-Doping Code, seems to have been ignored. The investigation carried out appears to have been neither independent nor thorough. The proffered reasoning for the positive tests – food tainted with TMZ rather than any intentional use – was accepted on seemingly thin evidence despite similar arguments from other athletes being rejected. The athletes were ultimately cleared to compete at the Tokyo Games without anyone the wiser, several of them winning medals and setting records.
Perhaps WADA was unable to gain information and cooperation from CHINADA, the Chinese national anti-doping organisation. As WADA cannot compel states to act, they rely on cooperation to achieve their goals. If a state refuses, WADA has few tools at its disposal to change minds, particularly in closed systems such as China or even Russia or other countries at war. However, it could also be that WADA simply felt that they made the correct decisions to trust China – who counts a member of its national Olympic Committee as a WADA Vice President, setting up a potential conflict of interest – as they indicated in their press conference in response to the scandal.
The failures are troubling, given that any case of this scale should have had the attention of officials at the highest levels of anti-doping as well as within swimming’s own governing body and the International Olympic Committee. Especially considering the recent history of Russian state doping, it would be expected that any suspicion of organized doping would be given extra scrutiny and the rules would be followed precisely. Indeed, if fair competition is at stake, you would expect the organisation professing to uphold this basic sport value to take it seriously. This suggests that WADA either chose to ignore them or that WADA were ineffective in their efforts to carry them out. Neither bode well for its future legitimacy.
Whatever the reasons, once again athletes have paid the price for governance failures. WADA have potentially allowed doping athletes to compete and win on the world’s biggest sporting stage, the Olympic Games, to the disadvantage of the non-doping athletes it claims it protects. They have denied the Chinese swimmers in question the opportunity to have their case heard in the same manner as others, meaning if this was all the result of accidental food contamination these athletes will suffer from being unable to set the record straight. But WADA has also failed sport and caused sport itself to fail at its basic task: setting and enforcing competition rules.
The next INDR conference will be in August 2024. Our conference is open to academics, students, sport officials, athletes, media, and those interested in discussion and debate about doping. Over the years we have had scattered attendance from anti-doping officials as we debated some of the very issues at the heart of this current scandal. One of this year’s keynote speakers is Aron d’Souza, the founder of the Enhanced Movement, who will unquestionably point to his alternative sport movement as a way forward in (anti-)doping. Perhaps this year, sport organizations will pay attention.
Copyright © April Henning & Jörg Krieger 2024
