Editor’s note: This is the second of a three-part series looking at the Russian doping scandal
In May this year, the International Cricket Council (ICC) lifted the provisional suspension for doping it had placed on the Sri Lankan wicketkeeper-batsman Kusal Perera.
The ban had been imposed on him the previous December after a test in October had found 19-Norandrostenedione, a metabolic precursor of nandrolone, but also used widely as a prohormone dietary supplement.
Perera, with help from Sri Lanka Cricket (SLC) and a team of expert lawyers and doctors, contested the charge on the basis that the amount found in the sample was insubstantial.
A substance had been found in his blood of that there was no doubt. But Perera underwent a polygraph test – which he passed – along with a separate urine test and had hair samples analysed to examine what substances had passed through his body over a period of time.
Eventually, his legal team suggested that the World Anti Doping Agency (Wada) laboratory in Doha, Qatar might have “misidentified impurities in the samples as 19-Norandrostenedione, given the very low concentrations of that substance found in the samples”.
The ICC hired an independent expert to review the lab’s findings and though the expert found that the substance was correctly identified, there was doubt about the scientific and technical means by which the lab arrived at the conclusion that it did. “[It] could not be ruled out that the 19-Norandrostenedione was produced naturally in the player’s body and/or formed in the samples after the player provided them.”
The lab was forced to withdraw the Adverse Analytical Finding and instead call it an “Atypical Finding”. The ICC released a statement in which they cleared Perera unequivocally.
More Osman Samiuddin on doping:
• Rio 2016: IOC deferring on Russia is a mere poke at the tip of the iceberg
• Boycotts and bans: A look back at countries who pulled out previously
• Wada's doping failures extend far beyond Russia as the ICC are also demanding answers
• More money could help as Wada also need to grow some teeth to become effective
• Russia by no means the only doping offenders at the Olympics – past or present
• From MLB to Balco – other sports and organisations tainted by doping scandals
The chief executive David Richardson added: “...the ICC is troubled in this case by the fact that the Qatar laboratory has issued an Adverse Analytical Finding that has then had to be withdrawn and replaced with an Atypical Finding.
“Whilst I am confident that this is an isolated incident in respect of tests commissioned by the ICC, we are seeking an urgent explanation from Wada and the laboratory in an attempt to understand what has transpired and what will be done to ensure it does not happen again.”
Privately, the ICC was even unhappier, wondering how a Wada-accredited lab could have got this wrong.
The development skipped by the radars of much of the wider sporting world – cricket, as much as it likes to think otherwise, is less global than a lot of sports – but it came in the middle of an especially bad time for Wada.
Days earlier, Wada had suspended its accredited lab in Bloemfontein, South Africa, for failing to meet Wada standards.
Last month, it suspended the accredited lab in Rio for similar reasons; those two brought the number of labs to six in recent months that Wada had suspended.
If these feel like procedural failings, there is plenty of existential angst about the world’s leading anti-doping body, nearly 17 years after it first came into being.
In particular its role in the Russian doping crisis has come under intense and heated scrutiny, primarily for its inertia.
In a long, detailed investigation in June, the New York Times drew a vivid picture of Wada turning a blind eye to a continuing stream of information about Russia’s doping regime.
As long ago as December 2012, for instance, Wada was in receipt of an email from a Russian silver medallist discus thrower, in which she offered her cooperation in uncovering what she alleged to be widespread, systematic doping in her country.
Instead of starting an inquiry, Wada forwarded the email to anti-doping officials in Russia, the very people the athlete had claimed were running the doping programme.
That, the investigation claimed, was just one of several warnings sent to Wada over the years – a former Wada vice-president has gone on record to say that the agency was aware of what was going on in Russia during his tenure, from 2008-2013 and yet took no concrete action.
Cricket lovers will be familiar with the sounds of Wada’s main defence, that it has been restricted by a lack of resource and investigative capacity.
That, after all, is identical to the reasons the ICC’s anti-corruption unit (ACSU) most often rolls out when defending its record in the fight against corruption in cricket – only in September 2011 did Wada hire its first investigator.
Wada’s attitude is a hangover of its origins; when it was set up in Lausanne, Switzerland in November 1999, its remit was bureaucratic: harmonising doping rules and testing procedures, helping set up anti-doping programmes in individual countries, creating a standard list of sanctions.
It was, and continues to be, heavily reliant on funding from the International Olympic Committee (IOC) as well as several national governments.
Critics say funding from the IOC, as well as the fact that officials often sit on both the IOC and Wada boards, is an inherent conflict of interest.
Additionally, over the last three years, the Russian government has contributed US$1.14 million (Dh4.1m) over its annual contributions (and no reason given for the extra money).
Much like the ACSU in cricket after the News of the World sting in 2010, it took a media organ – in this instance a German TV documentary in December 2014 – to reverse Wada’s inertia on Russia.
Since then, Wada has utilised the services of an investigative agency, which led first to the 300-page-plus report in November last year that accused Russia of state-sanctioned doping in track and field and, belatedly, the ban on their participation at Rio in those events.
A second investigative report was published last week, which found widespread doping beyond just track and field in Russia.
Too little too late, however, according to many athletes. Last month, the chairs of the IOC Athletes’ Commission and Wada’s athletes’ committee Claudia Bokel and Beckie Scott, wrote a scathing letter to the IOC and Wada in which they accused the bodies of “shattering the confidence” of athletes around the world over their failures with Russia.
osamiuddin@thenational.ae
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