Alarm at Jamaica’s testing void
THE World Anti-Doping Authority is to launch an audit of Jamaica’s drug-testing agency following allegations that its policing of superstars collapsed months before the London Games.
THE World Anti-Doping Authority ( Wada) is to launch an “extraordinary” audit of Jamaica’s drug-testing agency following allegations that its policing of the island’s sprinting superstars led by Usain Bolt all but collapsed in the months before they dazzled at the Olympic Games in London.
Wada’s probe follows details revealed to the Caribbean’s oldest newspaper by the former executive director of the Jamaica AntiDoping Commission.
It indicated an almost complete breakdown in its out-of-competition testing from January last year to the Games’ July opening.
The Jamaican agency’s chairman Herbert Elliott dismissed Renee Anne Shirley’s figures as lies, describing her as “a bit demented” and “a Judas”.
But Wada confirmed that there was, as Shirley asserted, “a significant gap in testing” by the Jamaican commission as athletes trained in the months ahead of the Games. Wada said it was concerned enough to investigate.
International Olympic Committee (IOC) medical chiefs, Wada and Britain’s anti-doping agency, which also worked on London’s massive drug-testing programme, revealed that they were kept in the dark about the Jamaican testing lapses that Shirley exposed in her August letter to The Gleaner.
“There was a period of — and forgive me if I don’t have the number of months right — maybe five to six months at the beginning of 2012 when there was no effective operation,” Wada directorgeneral David Howman said in an interview.
Jamaican stars did not go completely untested into the Games.
Track and field’s governing body, the International Association of Athletics Federations, says it extensively tested elite Jamaicans and that Bolt was tested more than 12 times last year. History’s fastest human has never failed a drug test. In London, Jamaica won eight of 12 individual sprint medals and Bolt became the first man to win the 100m/200m sprint double at consecutive Games. He also anchored the relay team to victory in world-record time.
The Shirley revelations have been alarming enough to prompt action. While Wada has audited Jamaica’s testing regime in the past, Howman said its new mission was in direct response to the problems Shirley exposed and the positive doping tests this year of five athletes who competed for Jamaica in London.
“It’s an extraordinary visit,” Howman said. “Jamaica is a high priority — they’re on our radar.”
Wada is unhappy that Jamaica hasn’t agreed to a swift inspection. Elliott said the Jamaica AntiDoping Commission couldn’t accommodate the auditors at the date Wada wanted and now it isn’t expecting the visit before the end of the year.
“It doesn’t impress us that much,” said Howman. “If there’s going to be that sort of delay, you need to have a better reason.”
Shirley says the Jamaican body conducted 96 tests in competition last year before the Olympics, all in May and June, at an invitational meeting and the national trials. But away from the competitive events, there was no Jamaican testing for five of the seven months before the opening of the Games, Shirley asserted.
To catch and deter cheats, a combination of in- and out-ofcompetition testing is vital. But after 10 tests in February and a solitary test in April, the Jamaica Anti-Doping Commission’s out-ofcompetition programme stopped, according to Shirley’s figures. She gave the same figures to Sports Illustrated, where they generated more worldwide attention than her letter to The Gleaner.
“It irritated me as a Jamaican: one test out of competition, for what, five months or four months?” Shirley said in a telephone interview. “Given that it was an Olympic year, I felt that more could have been done.”
International Olympic Committee medical commission chairman Arne Ljungqvist and Patrick Schamasch, who retired as IOC medical director after London, said they weren’t told of the testing gap. They said they could have ordered additional tests on Jamaica’s team had they known. The IOC did a total of 3,800 urine and 1,200 blood tests in London.
“We definitely weren’t inform- ed of anything about Jamaica,” Schamasch said. “Had we been told (Jamaica Anti-Doping Commission) wasn’t able to test beforehand we possibly could have readjusted our aim a little bit.”
Said Ljungqvist: “Jamaica is far from being alone, you know. We know that out-of-competition testing in the proper way is unfortunately not being conducted in many parts of the world. One shouldn’t single out Jamaica.”
But Jamaica isn’t just any country: led by Bolt, its athletes dethroned the US as the dominant sprinting power which they were at the last two Olympics, in Beijing and London. That demands a higher degree of vigilance.
“It’s almost abnormal, let’s face it. For a country of fewer than 3-million people,” said Shirley. “What, you’re (almost) saying (is that) there’s something peculiar in the water in Jamaica.”
Elliott, chairman of the Jamaica Anti-Doping Commission, bristles at mention of Shirley’s name: “Ms Shirley has done this country and herself a great deal of harm by saying things that are not totally in keeping with the truth.”
The body’s — and Shirley’s — overall testing figures for last year actually agree. Both say a total of 179 tests were done — 108 in competition and 71 out of competition. But Shirley gave month-by-month figures. The Jamaica Anti-Doping Commission didn’t.
Elliott confirmed that “there was no money in the coffers” when he was named chairman in February last year. Also hampering the agency’s work was that 400 of its testing kits were out of date and therefore unusable. He said it borrowed kits from other Caribbean nations and from “people in Florida who we know”.
The main obstacle he cited to out-of-competition testing was that “most of our athletes were off the island. We had them overseas preparing for the Olympics. Therefore we asked the IAAF to test them overseas wherever they were. All right? And they did.”
He claimed testers descended “in droves every day” on Jamaica’s pre-Olympic track-and-field camp in Birmingham, England, in the weeks immediately before the Games started.
Shirley conceded that other agencies policed the Jamaicans. “I’m pretty sure all of the athletes who went to London were tested at least once and the majority of them more than once,” she said.
Bolt, asked at his last race this year how frequently he is tested, said: “Sometimes they will come like six times in one month and then you won’t see them for two months and then they come three times in one week. So I don’t really keep track. I just get drug-tested when I do.”
Shirley left the Jamaica AntiDoping Commission this February, saying: “The board and I did not get along, and there were other problems in the system. It overwhelmed me,” she said.
Elliott said she was fired. He wouldn’t say why. “She has her axe to grind,” he said.
After Shirley exposed the Jamaica Anti-Doping Commission’s shortcomings, Howman wrote to the Jamaican government asking for an explanation.
He says he got long replies and an invitation to send experts.
The Wada team will check whether the body remains compliant with Wada’s code of antidoping rules, who the agency is testing, and how, its budget, and “that what they’re doing is of significant quality”, Howman said.
Elliott expects Wada’s team to visit late this year or early next year.