‘Stop that urgently.’ Possible path to innocence for Russian skater held back at WADA’s urging

When details from a scientific experiment that could have helped clear embattled Russian figure skater Kamila Valieva landed at the World Anti-Doping Agency, the leader of that 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 went on without it. What impact 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.

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’ve supported Valieva’s contamination defense and had been initiated by Russia’s anti-doping agency, 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 in the outcome?

While it is unclear what impact the report 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 world anti-doping code places the burden on athletes, not scientists or anti-doping agencies, to explain how banned substances got into their system — a burden that 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 violated a standard WADA established when it created its Intelligence & 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 I&I.

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 (Russian Anti-Doping Agency) 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 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 well-respected scientist, who conducted an experiment to see whether traces of a cut-up tablet of the banned drug Temozolomide, known as TMZ, could cause a positive test. The answer, according to the people with knowledge of the case who spoke to AP: yes.

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’ve 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 didn’t 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.

Though sometimes seen as outlandish, these sort of contamination cases are fairly common in global anti-doping.

U.S. Open tennis champion Jannik Sinner recently had what could have been a substantial penalty reduced when he was able to prove a banned substance entered his system through a massage by his physiotherapist. One no-fault case stemmed from an athlete testing positive after giving her dog medicine that contained a banned substance. One punishment got reduced when a sprinter claimed he was contaminated after using a tainted male-enhancement product. Most common are cases that come from athletes ingesting banned substances by eating contaminated meat.

Parallels between Valieva’s case and the case involving Chinese swimmers

Valieva’s case involved a banned heart stimulant that is forbidden because it is known for helping the heart operate more efficiently, which can give athletes a clear advantage.

She has largely been seen as a victim who had no say in whether she wanted to use performance enhancers. Her case erupted at the Winter Olympics and wound through multiple courts until it was finally decided by CAS, which upheld her disqualification and awarded first place in the team competition to the Americans, who had finished a spot behind Valieva and her Russian teammates.

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. But 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.

WADA insists it operated according to the rules in the China case, but it still has been heavily scrutinized for not quickly publicizing details of the doping positives, as is customary in a no-fault contamination scenario.

An investigation it commissioned, full details of which are due out this week, found that WADA made a “reasonable decision” to take the path it did. The investigator, however, pointed out doubts that WADA’s own science director had about the Chinese saying that the contamination came from traces of TMZ scattered about a hotel kitchen.

Though the Russians also said Valieva was a victim of contamination, her case was handled differently.

The relationship between WADA and Russia has been tense, following 10 years of difficult and, some felt, duplicitous activity by the Russians as they sought to regain firm footing in international sports. Potentially the most embarrassing moment for WADA came in 2019 after it had, at the time, reinstated RUSADA, only to learn that Russians had missed a deadline to provide WADA with details related to a long-running doping scheme because they were tampering with the documents.

RUSADA later was declared noncompliant again. It was against this backdrop that WADA’s I&I unit, acting as a conduit between Saugy and RUSADA, received a draft report of the Saugy experiment. As a matter of routine, the results were forwarded to the WADA general counsel.

Not long after, it became clear that the lawyer had shared the information with Niggli, who started the process of trying to tamp down the findings.

Neither WADA nor RUSADA advanced information about the Saugy experiment beyond that, and Valieva’s case reached its conclusion without details from the experiment being included.

Valieva ultimately received a four-year suspension that runs through 2025 — shortly before the start of the next Winter Olympics.