Ryan Ba­choo

Lead Ed­i­tor-News­gath­er­ing

ryan.ba­choo@cnc3.co.tt

As the Olympic Games take place in Paris, there is a fierce bat­tle tak­ing place on the side­lines. The World An­ti-Dop­ing Agency (WA­DA) has been in con­flict with the US Gov­ern­ment. US law­mak­ers have ac­cused WA­DA of fail­ing to in­ves­ti­gate dop­ing al­le­ga­tions against Chi­nese swim­mers prop­er­ly.

The FBI is now in­ves­ti­gat­ing the or­gan­i­sa­tion. WA­DA was formed in 1999 af­ter the In­ter­na­tion­al Olympic Com­mit­tee urged changes af­ter dop­ing scan­dals rocked the sport­ing world. How­ev­er, the body has been un­der in­creas­ing scruti­ny for its trans­paren­cy and has been ac­cused of bias.

Dr Adri­an Lorde, vice chair­man of the Caribbean Re­gion­al An­ti-Dop­ing Or­gan­i­sa­tion, sat down with me on The Big In­ter­view. The pro­gramme airs tonight at 8 pm. Here are ex­cerpts from that in­ter­view.

RB: Are you sur­prised by this drop in con­fi­dence in WA­DA from cer­tain sports sec­tors and al­so some coun­tries?

AL: The World An­ti-Dop­ing Agency, which was formed in 1999, out of all the Tour de France races and what would have hap­pened pri­or to that has been on the course of try­ing to main­tain their lev­el of ac­cep­tance to all sports and all coun­tries. That has been a dif­fi­cult task, of course, with many stake­hold­ers, and you know, you have the Olympics or the sports on one side and the gov­ern­men­tal bod­ies on one side, which is a unique or­gan­i­sa­tion. It was start­ed as an in­de­pen­dent or­gan­i­sa­tion and strived to main­tain its in­de­pen­dence over the years. That has been a chal­lenge be­cause you would al­ways have peo­ple who may have cer­tain al­le­giances or may not all be above board, as we found out with the Rus­sians ... There were some cas­es that oc­curred and were not brought to the fore, as is nor­mal for the world an­ti-dop­ing code, which is the Bible so to speak, that we go by a code that is ad­hered to by all sports and all gov­ern­ments. But, it seems that at least the Amer­i­cans think that that was not fol­lowed in this par­tic­u­lar case. What has hap­pened in re­cent times is that it has be­come more ath­lete-friend­ly, where the ath­lete knows the core of every­thing is pro­tect­ing the rights of the clean ath­lete. What we use now as a dead­line, pro­tect­ing the rights of the clean ath­lete, where­as you first heard “no to dop­ing,” but the ath­lete now is at the fore­front of all that is be­ing said, in an­ti-dop­ing.

Giv­en what the In­ter­na­tion­al Olympic Com­mit­tee knew pre-2016 Olympics and still al­lowed the Russ­ian ath­letes to com­pete as a fed­er­a­tion at the Rio games, does the IOC have blame to take here?

Yeah, I was at those games in 2016, and that was a big is­sue where the Rus­sians seemed not to have had every­thing above board, but the IOC, be­cause they want to in­clude 200, and what­ev­er num­ber of na­tions, still al­lowed the team to par­tic­i­pate. That seemed to have caused a lot of erup­tions from them, and it has on­ly got­ten a lit­tle worse over a pe­ri­od of time.

Con­tin­ues on page 39

The IOC funds WA­DA. Each gov­ern­ment right now gives a cer­tain num­ber of dol­lars that they fund. Bar­ba­dos, for in­stance, we give 5,800 US dol­lars. Trinidad and To­ba­go gives $10,112 per year. What the IOC does is match what­ev­er the gov­ern­ments give one-to-one. So if Bar­ba­dos gets 5,800, then IOC will give 5,800 US dol­lars. That doesn’t mean that they have a big in­flu­ence on WA­DA di­rect­ly, are able to, or we shouldn’t think that they do.

Are the al­le­ga­tions of the World An­ti-Dop­ing Agency be­ing bi­ased against some ath­letes and some coun­tries cred­i­ble?

Yes, they’re cred­i­ble. I sat on the board for three years and an­oth­er two years af­ter that. I have been on mis­sions, pro­mot­ing WA­DA and pro­mot­ing clean sport in our var­i­ous games over that pe­ri­od of time. It seems to be a geopo­lit­i­cal sit­u­a­tion where some coun­tries may say, “Well, we’re pay­ing x dol­lars; we need to have our say on this mat­ter.” And where­as in their own coun­tries, it is pos­si­ble that they’re not fol­low­ing all the rules in place, es­pe­cial­ly in the case of pro­fes­sion­al sports.

Are you con­cerned about the cred­i­bil­i­ty of the re­sults of this Olympic Games?

No. What the In­ter­na­tion­al Olympic Com­mit­tee has done for these games is they have washed their hands from the an­ti-dop­ing as­pect of the games. The games have giv­en the au­thor­i­ty for test­ing for dop­ing to the In­ter­na­tion­al Test­ing Agency, an in­de­pen­dent or­gan­i­sa­tion in da­ta test­ing head­quar­tered in Lau­sanne, Switzer­land, and they have co­or­di­nat­ed through what is called a test dis­tri­b­u­tion plan. They’ve looked at all of the sports; they have looked at the his­to­ry of an­ti-dop­ing. In those par­tic­u­lar sports, they looked at the pos­i­tive cas­es in bowl­ing as op­posed to track and field and weightlift­ing and so on. They have worked out a test dis­tri­b­u­tion plan, where they’re do­ing test­ing in com­pe­ti­tion. They’re do­ing test­ing out of com­pe­ti­tion, and ac­tu­al­ly, they start­ed test­ing since April. Ath­letes who were on this list to at­tend the games in Paris have been sub­ject­ed to test­ing by the na­tion­al an­ti-dop­ing agen­cies, un­der the aus­pices of the In­ter­na­tion­al Test­ing Agency. So that has been done, and the re­sults are no longer be­ing han­dled by the In­ter­na­tion­al Olympic Com­mit­tee.

How dif­fi­cult is it for WA­DA to con­duct its work in such a su­per­charged po­lit­i­cal world?

What it will con­tin­ue to do as they have been do­ing, they al­so have a team in Paris to over­see what the ITA is do­ing. So, they’re still there as in­de­pen­dent ob­servers to see what is hap­pen­ing. So, go to the In­ter­na­tion­al Test­ing Agency, and if there are any ad­verse an­a­lyt­i­cal find­ings or an­ti-dop­ing rule vi­o­la­tions, they will be han­dled. Al­so, all those par­ties as well as the par­tic­u­lar coun­tries. Every­thing has been done above board, and the in­de­pen­dent body will al­so see to it that every­thing has been done to the sat­is­fac­tion of every­one, es­pe­cial­ly the ath­letes.

Hav­ing ath­lete rep­re­sen­ta­tion and giv­ing the ath­letes a voice in this an­ti-dop­ing process, is that some­thing that re­al­ly rad­i­cal­ly needs to change as soon as pos­si­ble?

Yes, we have been en­cour­ag­ing that, and it’s been prac­tised in most of our coun­tries. In Bar­ba­dos, for in­stance, on our an­ti-dop­ing or­gan­i­sa­tion. Yes, we give the ath­letes a voice so that they will be able to tell us how they feel about what’s been hap­pen­ing and ad­vise us ac­cord­ing­ly.