The sport’s drug fighters are “destroying” the kind of crucial information that helped nab Alberto Salazar, the infamous American track and field coach, Mail Sport can reveal.
With the World Championships in Athletics kicking off this weekend, the global anti-doping agency has been criticized for erasing personal data from tens of thousands of athletes each year.
Leading researchers say the policy of erasing whereabouts and certain medical records after 12 months is detrimental to the fight against drug smugglers.
They insist it also harms clean athletes because the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) removes information that could help confirm their innocence.
Critics of WADA’s ruling, which came into effect in 2021, say it is based on an unnecessarily cautious interpretation of European privacy law.
Drug criminals are “destroying” the kind of information that helped get Alberto Salazar
Salazar, the former coach of Mo Farah, was suspended for four years in 2019 for doping violations
The CEO of the US anti-doping agency said his organization could not have sanctioned Salazar under Wada’s new restrictions.
Travis Tygart, the CEO of the US anti-doping agency, said his organization could not have sanctioned Salazar under Wada’s new restrictions.
Salazar, Mo Farah’s former coach at the Nike Oregon Training Center, was suspended for four years in 2019 for doping-related violations. In one of the most high-profile recent drug cases in sports, Salazar was found guilty of several offenses, including possession of a banned substance and tampering with a doping control process.
“We believe the new rule is too restrictive an interpretation of the data law,” Tygart told Mail Sport. “We would have lost valuable evidence that helped expose the anti-doping rule violations against Coach Salazar and a doctor (Jeffrey Brown) – both athlete support staff – in our Nike Oregon Project case if the current nullification rule was in effect been.
“This seems to have gone unnecessarily too far and could also potentially harm clean athletes and the fight to protect their rights and the integrity of the competition.”
Salazar was found not guilty of doping one of his athletes. Farah, who left the Oregon Project in 2017, has never been charged with drug use.
WADA has reduced the length of time they retain whereabouts data from 18 to 12 months in 2021 to comply with European data privacy laws.
They did the same with failed requests for therapeutic use waivers (TUEs) and any medical records attached to the application. A TUE allows athletes to use banned substances for legitimate medical reasons, even though athletes have been accused of abusing the system.
World anti-doping chiefs insisted they weren’t overly concerned about athletes who may have tried to take advantage of limited drug testing programs during the coronavirus pandemic
Wada statistics for 2021 show that 241,430 samples were taken from athletes. The agency told this newspaper that whereabouts information is kept on tens of thousands of athletes
A British parliamentary report said there was evidence that Sir Bradley Wiggins was seeking a TUE for triamcinolone to improve his cycling performance, rather than to treat his asthma, as the Briton insisted. Wiggins vigorously denied the allegation.
Professor Yannis Pitsiladis, a member of WADAD’s health, medical, research and commission committee, said the decision to destroy whereabouts records so quickly contradicted the agency’s policy of storing doping samples for a decade.
“I believe that keeping the data for at least 10 years would be in line with the Wada code which allows storage of samples for 10 years and is essential for the fight against doping,” said Pitsiladis, whose research is funded by the WADA.
Athletes must provide details including address, contact information, training and competition schedules, and a 60-minute daily time slot where they can be located for drug testing.
The information enables drug testing to be conducted without prior notice and helps detectives identify questionable behavior patterns, such as spending time in training camps suspected of being linked to doping.
Three whereabouts ‘failures’, such as missing a test or not providing the correct information, can lead to a doping sanction.
The Athletics Integrity Unit has had notable success suspending athletes on such grounds. Those banned in the past year include Kenyan Wilson Kipsang Kiprotich, a London Marathon winner, and Randolph Ross, the American who won gold in the 4x400m relay at the Tokyo Olympics.
The MoS has learned that the decision to shorten the retention period has greatly frustrated the investigative teams of both national anti-doping agencies and similar organizations associated with individual sports.
The research teams said the 18-month rule itself was unnecessarily restrictive. Some of these organizations have taken legal advice themselves and are finding ways to preserve the data once accessed from the WADA database ADAMS.
But others will follow WADA’s lead. For example, the UK Anti-Doping Agency said that ‘whereabouts data was provided by WADA’.
American athlete Randolph Ross received a suspension last year (pictured in Tokyo in 2021)
The MoS contacted a prominent sports lawyer who was critical of WADA’s approach. The expert said the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation “allows the retention of information for as long as it is needed.”
The expert cited Article 5 of the Regulation, which states that personal data shall not be kept longer than necessary for the purposes for which the personal data are processed; (it) may be kept for longer periods insofar as (it) will be processed solely for archiving purposes in the public interest, scientific … or statistical purposes’.
Wada statistics for 2021 show that 241,430 samples were taken from athletes. The agency told this newspaper that whereabouts information is kept on tens of thousands of athletes.
When told of the criticism of WADA’s policies, which are part of its International Standard for the Protection of Privacy and Personal Information (ISPPI), an agency spokesperson said: “The ISPPI has been developed and is being revised in accordance with data protection and privacy laws along with advice from legal and privacy experts and stakeholder feedback.”