Olympics – Austria’s boss: One-sided measures lead to chaos in the anti-doping program

By Iain Axon

PARIS (Reuters) – Solo actions by individual countries could turn the global fight against doping into chaos, the managing director of the Austrian anti-doping agency said on Sunday.

Michael Cepic told a press conference that countries that launched their own investigations, such as the United States in a case involving 23 Chinese swimmers, would jeopardize the global anti-doping system and damage athletes’ trust in the system.

“I don’t think it helps to expand the scope of your investigative capabilities to other countries, other regions, other nations,” Cepic said. “That’s not a step forward. I think it’s a step backwards.”

“Imagine if there were 10 or 15 countries, each with its own laws and rules, and you said, ‘Okay, I’m going to investigate this or that crime in each country,’ and then you would have, well, anarchy is a strong word, but you would have chaos. Let’s put it that way.”

The United States has launched its own investigation into the Chinese swimmers who tested positive in their own country but were cleared to compete.

The US move sparked a wave of criticism and a warning from the World Anti-Doping Agency that the US could ultimately be isolated from world sport.

The 23 Chinese swimmers tested positive for a banned substance before the 2021 Tokyo Olympics while training in China in the absence of American athletes.

They were later exonerated by a Chinese investigation that said the swimmers had been inadvertently exposed to the drug through contamination.

WADA found no wrongdoing in its own investigation into the cases, but this has now triggered a separate investigation by the US Department of Justice.

An independent investigation earlier this month concluded that WADA had not mishandled the case or shown favoritism, while an audit by World Aquatics concluded that there had been no mismanagement or cover-up at the global anti-doping organization.

The US is using the Rodchenkov Act to launch its own investigation.

This law, passed in 2020, extends the jurisdiction of U.S. law enforcement to all international sporting competitions involving American athletes or those with financial ties to the United States.

“The general trust in the anti-doping world has declined and I regret that very much,” said Cepic.

“And what I think hurts is the trust of the athletes, because they are the heart of what we do and it will take some time to regain that trust, but we can only work on it,” he said.

(Reporting by Iain Axon; Writing by Karolos Grohmann; Editing by Ken Ferris)