THE WORLD Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) is launching an “extraordinary” audit of Jamaica’s drug-testing agency following allegations that its policing of the island’s sprinting superstars all but collapsed in the months before they dazzled at the London Games.
WADA’s probe follows data the former executive director of the Jamaica Anti-Doping Commission (JADCO) revealed to the Caribbean’s oldest newspaper indicating a near complete breakdown in JADCO’s out-of-competition testing from January 2012 to the July opening of the Olympics.
In an interview with The Associated Press, JADCO chairman Herbert Elliott dismissed Renee Anne Shirley’s figures as lies and described her as “a bit demented” and “a Judas.”
But the World Anti-Doping Agency tells a different story: WADA confirmed to the AP that there was, as Shirley asserted, “a significant gap of no testing” by JADCO as athletes trained in the months ahead of the Games — and that it is concerned enough to investigate.
International Olympic Committee medical chiefs, WADA and Britain’s anti-doping agency, which also worked on London’s massive drug-testing program, revealed to the AP 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 — but maybe five to six months during the beginning part of 2012 where there was no effective operation,” WADA Director General David Howman said in an interview. “No testing. There might have been one or two, but there was no testing. So we were worried about it, obviously.”
Jamaican stars didn’t go completely untested into the Games. Track and field’s governing body, the IAAF, 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 8 of 12 individual sprint medals. Bolt became the first man to win both the 100 and 200 meters at consecutive games and anchored Jamaica’s relay win in world-record time.
It isn’t possible to judge with any certainty whether the gaps in Jamaica’s testing might have opened a door to cheating, particularly because other agencies involved refuse to give a complete picture of exactly how many tests they conducted on the Jamaicans in 2012. /AP