by Bernard, published on Moon of Alabama, January 9, 2025
In April last year the U.S. government, with the prominent help from the New York Times, opened a campaign against the World Anti Doping Agency WADA and against Chinese sports competition.
Top Chinese Swimmers Tested Positive for Banned Drug, Then Won Olympic Gold – New York Times
The positive testing, which found a very minor digestion of a performance enhancing drug, was done by the Chinese anti-doping agency. It had immediately blocked the athletes from further competitions. A thorough investigation found that the drugs had ben ingested unwittingly. WADA had accepted those results. The athletes were free to take part on future competitions.
But as the U.S. did not like to compete against world class Chinese athletes it instigated a smear campaign against them.
Smearing The ‘Enemy’ – A Typical U.S. Info-Op – Moon of Alabama
The Chinese anti-doping agency as well as WADA handled the case by the book. There was a plausible explanation of a food contamination with tiny amounts of a drug during a swimming event in China. No other test before and after that event had been positive. The amount of drugs involved was too tiny to make a difference. WADA did not put out a public notice about the incident as no further action was required. No athletes were publicly named and shamed as none had been proven to be guilty.But that did not fit the U.S. messaging agenda that was designed to defame China. Thus other headlines in the usual western propaganda media were following up: …
WADA responded to the onslaught:
WADA thoroughly reviewed the cases in early 2024 with all due skepticism, and concluded that there was no evidence to challenge contaminated meat as the source of the positive tests and therefore decided not to appeal to CAS. None of the various other Anti-Doping Organizations appealed either. As WADA has indicated previously, once there is no evidence to contest a no-fault contamination scenario, no Anti-Doping Organization has ever appealed a case to convert a finding of no violation into one of a violation with no fault.
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The politicization of anti-doping continues with this latest attempt by the media in the United States to imply wrongdoing on the part of WADA and the broader anti-doping community. As we have seen over recent months, WADA has been unfairly caught in the middle of geopolitical tensions between superpowers but has no mandate to participate in that.
In August 2024, in a slashback to the U.S., Reuters published an ‘Exclusive’ story about the illegal handling of doping cases by the U.S. anti-doping agency. USADA let athletes continue to competed even after the had been caught doping.
Athletes undercover? Global and US anti-doping agencies clash over tactics – Reuters / CNN
The World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) says US agency USADA broke the global code by letting several athletes it had caught between 2011 and 2014 violating drugs rules go undercover and keep on competing without prosecution in exchange for information on other violators.USADA says the tactic is necessary and allowed, and wants to keep using it. WADA says it is against its code and that athletes caught breaking doping rules should not get to line up in races, potentially winning prize money and medals, without first being publicly prosecuted and sanctioned.
Now the U.S. had egg on its face.
But it did not relent in its efforts to make WADA do as it says.
The Biden administration, in consultation with Congress, decided to withhold its dues from WADA. But that attempt to get its will has also failed:
U.S. Funding Dispute With World Anti-Doping Agency Boils Over (archived) – New York Times
The United States had held back its funding to the agency, known as WADA, after losing faith in its ability to guard against the use of banned performance-enhancing drugs at events like the Olympics, the White House said.
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On Wednesday, the antidoping agency responded by removing the United States, which had been the single largest country funder to the agency, from a position on its board.WADA said in a statement that in line with its rules, “representatives from a country which has not paid its dues are ineligible to sit on the foundation board or the executive committee.”Loss of the board seat is automatic, the agency added.
The bullying campaign the Biden administration has led against WADA to bend it to its will did not achieve even one of its preferred results:
U.S. policy toward WADA has been led by Dr. Rahul Gupta, the Biden administration’s drug czar, who oversees the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy.
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Dr. Gupta’s chief demand was that WADA submit to an outside audit of its operations. He also said that WADA needed to drop a defamation lawsuit it filed against American antidoping authorities, who have accused WADA of covering up the positive tests. And he wanted proof that an ethics complaint filed against him — that appeared designed to have him kicked off WADA’s executive committee — was dropped.But despite a lengthy back and forth between the White House and WADA — including face-to-face meetings in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia’s capital, last month — the agency failed to go along with Dr. Gupta’s demands. It also signaled that if the United States failed to pay there would be consequences and WADA would find alternative funding.In Riyadh, an Olympic official told a White House official that failure to pay U.S. dues could affect the country’s ability to host or participate in the Olympic Games, according to two people familiar with the exchange who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly.
The U.S. had launched a smear campaign against WADA. It has stopped to pay its share for WADA and lost its executive committee seat.
Rejecting to be bullied WADA and the International Olympic Committee are pulling on the same string.
Should the U.S. not relent in its attempts to break the rules future Olympic events, like the 2034 Winter Games planned for in Salt Lake City, may well move to other places.
U.S. athletes, which USADA allows to take part in competitions despite their doping, may well be excluded from future events.
The U.S. is convinced that its Might Makes Right.
But while bullying may work against weak European ‘allies’, it fails when it tries to bend international organizations which have the backing of the rest of the world.
*Featured Image: Marion Jones and Sun Yang, AP/NBCNY . Overlaid graphic from techport.com is altered to fit.