By Iain Axon
PARIS (Reuters) – Unilateral action by individual countries could turn the global fight against doping into a mess, the CEO of Austria’s anti-doping agency said on Sunday.
Michael Cepic told a press conference countries launching their own investigations, as the United States did in a case involving 23 Chinese swimmers, were putting the global anti-doping system at risk and damaged athletes’ trust in it.
“I don’t think to broaden the scope of your capability to investigate to other countries, other regions, other nations will help,” Cepic said. “It’s not a step forward. I think it’s a step backward.
“Because just imagine if you have 10 or 15 countries and they have all their own legislation and rules and said ‘okay, I will investigate this crime or that crime in every country’, and so you have, well, anarchy is a strong word, but you will have a mess. Let’s put it this way.”
The United States have launched their own investigation into the Chinese swimmers who tested positive in their own country but were cleared to compete.
The U.S. move has triggered a wave of criticism as well as a warning from the World Anti-Doping Agency that the U.S. could end up being isolated from world sport.
The 23 Chinese swimmers had tested positive for a banned substance before the Tokyo Olympics held in 2021 while training in China with no American athlete present.
They were later cleared by a Chinese investigation, which said the swimmers were inadvertently exposed to the drug through contamination.
WADA did not find any wrongdoing in its own investigation of the cases but that has since triggered a separate U.S. investigation by the U.S. Department of Justice.
An independent investigation earlier this month ruled WADA did not mishandle the case or show favouritism, while a World Aquatics audit concluded there was no mismanagement or cover-up by the global anti-doping body.
The U.S. are using the Rodchenkov Act to launch their own probe.
That piece of legislation, passed in 2020, extends U.S. law enforcement jurisdiction to any international sporting competitions that involve American athletes or have financial connections to the United States.
“The general trust in the anti-doping world, and this is something I really regret, has diminished,” said Cepic.
“And what hurts from my side is the trust of the athletes, because they are the centrepiece of our work and it will take some time to regain this trust but all we can do is work on that,” he said.
(Reporting by Iain Axon; Writing by Karolos Grohmann; Editing by Ken Ferris)
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