By withholding its contribution to the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA), the United States has relaunched its battle with the Montreal body, at the risk of exasperating the sporting world which had largely mobilized on this subject last year .
On Wednesday, the US Office of National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP) suspended the payment of $3.6 million owed to WADA for 2024, the US Anti-Doping Agency (USADA) announced.
However, the United States is by far the leading country contributing to the budget of the global anti-doping policeman, nearly $53 billion for 2024, half financed by governments and half by the International Olympic Committee (IOC). .
Why is the United States suspending its payment?
According to USADA, this is “protect the rights of athletes” that WADA would have violated by not ordering “an independent audit” of its operations after the scandal of the 23 Chinese swimmers tested positive in 2021 for a banned substance but not sanctioned.
This affair, revealed in the spring of 2024 by the New York Times and the German channel ARD, immediately took a geopolitical turn, reviving hostility between USADA boss Travis Tygart and WADA.
Tygart, already a virulent critic of WADA’s handling of the Russian doping cases revealed in 2015-2016, has been accusing the Montreal organization for months of having “allowed China to slip positive cases under the rug”.
The head of the American Anti-Doping Agency (USA), Travis Tygart, during a hearing at the Capitol on the fight against doping at the 2024 Olympic Games in Paris, June 25, 2024 in Washington / Nathan Howard / GETTY IMAGES NORTH AMERICA/AFP
The anti-doping policeman, for his part, insists that he has committed no fault in accepting the thesis of the “food contamination” put forward by the Chinese authorities, and considers the subject closed since a report by the Swiss prosecutor Eric Cottier, commissioned by the AMA, judged that she had worked “autonomously, independently and professionally”.
How is the sporting world reacting?
Asked by AFP, neither the International Olympic Committee nor the associations representing the summer (ASOIF) and winter (WOF) Olympic federations have yet commented on this latest development.
But last year, the three authorities strongly condemned the launching by the American justice system, at the beginning of July, of an investigation led by the FBI into WADA’s management of the case of the 23 Chinese swimmers.
This investigation is indeed based on the « Rodchenkov Act »promulgated at the end of 2020 by US President-elect Donald Trump during his first term, by which the United States granted itself extraterritorial jurisdiction in matters of doping.
-However, for the sporting world, the risk is to weaken WADA, created in 1999 in the wake of the Festina affair in cycling, to develop the World Anti-Doping Code and allow a coherent fight according to sports and countries.
“Can you imagine what the American reaction would be if Chinese security forces investigated American athletes? »asks AFP Michael Payne, the former IOC marketing director.
For him, the United States “appear to be deliberately trying to inflame the problem”a new example “the growing political instrumentalization of sport”.
What consequences for American sport?
On Wednesday, USADA assured that non-payment of the American contribution would not have “no impact on the rights of American athletes to compete in the United States or around the world”.
At a minimum, this new episode should revive criticism of the American double standard in matters of doping, since neither its professional leagues (basketball, hockey, American football and baseball) nor its powerful university sport apply the World Anti-Doping Code.
The president of the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA), Witold Banka, during a press conference during the 2024 Olympics, July 25 in Paris / Fabrice COFFRINI / AFP
“And USADA has done nothing to correct this situation”joked last July Witold Banka, the boss of the AMA, to the members of the IOC gathered in Paris for their 142nd session.
But above all, the IOC itself had put unprecedented pressure during this same session, by threatening to cancel the attribution of the 2034 Olympic Games to Salt Lake City. “in the event that the supreme authority of WADA (is) not fully respected”.
“The United States cannot clean up sport alone”had promised the governor of Utah to the press, while those responsible for Salt Lake City 2034 and the American Olympic Committee had increased their words of appeasement.
