When details from a scientific experiment that could have helped clear Russian figure skater Kamila Valieva landed at the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA), the leader of the organization’s reaction was unequivocal:
“We have to stop that urgently,” he wrote.
No mention of the test ever became public and Valieva’s defense at the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) went on without it. What effect the information could have had on Valieva’s case is unclear, but without it, the skater, then 15 years old, was eventually disqualified from the 2022 Winter Olympics after testing positive for a banned heart medication that would later become the focal point of a contamination case involving a group of Chinese swimmers who were not sanctioned after testing positive.
Photo: AP
Previously undisclosed details, including text exchanges between WADA’s director-general and another agency executive about what might have been a helpful turn of events for Valieva during the investigation, were revealed to The Associated Press by people familiar with the case.
The people shared the information on condition of anonymity due to fear of retribution.
The details painted a picture of WADA leadership wanting no connection to an experiment that could have supported Valieva’s contamination defense and had been initiated by the Russian Anti-Doping Agency (RUSADA), which at the time was noncompliant after years of wrongdoing. That status brought questions about whether international leaders were serious about making Russia follow the rules.
Would the report have made a difference to the outcome?
While it is unclear what effect it would have had on the case, omitting it raises a murky question about the ethics of the move to suppress it.
On the one hand, to prove contamination, the WADA code places the burden on athletes, not scientists or anti-doping agencies, to explain how banned substances got into their system — a burden that the CAS ultimately said Valieva did not meet.
On the other hand, a passage in the WADA International Standard for Testing and Investigations says investigators “should consider all possible outcomes at each key stage of the investigation, and should seek to gather not only any available evidence indicating that there is a case to answer, but also any available evidence indicating that there is no case to answer.”
There are also questions of whether WADA director-general Olivier Niggli and others contravened a standard WADA established when it created its Intelligence and Investigations Unit that gave the department authority to operate independently from the rest of WADA, including its president and director-general.
Upon learning of the experiment, Niggli texted Gunter Younger, the head of the unit.
Parts of the message read: “Gunter we have a big issue. How come we have [former anti-doping lab director Martial] Saugy doing an opinion for Valieva, super favorable to her... If it is a RUSADA opinion, we should absolutely not be involved in anyway... This is a big issue on our side to get involved in such an opinion that will be used in court. We have to stop that urgently.”
WADA did not respond to questions sent on Tuesday by the AP regarding the case.
Could a smoothie have contained the drug that caused Valieva’s positive?
It was RUSADA, not WADA, that asked the questions that led to the experiment, but because RUSADA was noncompliant and considered a pariah in many parts of the anti-doping world, RUSADA followed the custom at the time and asked WADA to serve as an intermediary with Saugy.
In this case, WADA connected the Russians with the scientist, who conducted an experiment to see whether traces of a cut-up tablet of the banned drug temozolomide (TMZ) could cause a positive test.
The answer was yes, according to the people with knowledge of the case who spoke to AP.
This would have fit with one of the defenses the Russians were using for Valieva: that her grandfather made a strawberry smoothie for her, possibly using the same cutting board or utensils he used to cut TMZ tablets for himself. Using this defense, if Valieva could prove her grandfather made the smoothie and she drank it within a certain time frame before her positive test, there was a chance she could have received a “no-fault” positive due to contamination that would have resulted in a less-stringent sanction.
Sports’ highest court ultimately refused that defense, stating that while there were plausible scientific explanations for contamination, Valieva did not meet the burden of proving she drank a tainted smoothie within that time frame.
“It is inherently implausible that an athlete at this elite level would take a homemade strawberry dessert with her across Russia and eat it during a competition period,” the CAS panel wrote in shooting down the explanation that Valieva put the smoothie in a refrigerator on a train ride from Moscow to St Petersburg, then ate it over a number of days.
Was WADA helping China while not willing to extend help to Russia?
In China, 23 swimmers stayed eligible after testing positive for TMZ in December 2020, about seven months before the Tokyo Olympics.
Unlike the episode involving Valieva, their case stayed completely under wraps until it was uncovered by German broadcaster ARD and the New York Times earlier this year.
Valieva ultimately received a four-year suspension that runs through next year — shortly before the start of the next Winter Olympics.
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