{"id":389531,"date":"2024-04-30T21:58:41","date_gmt":"2024-04-30T21:58:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/?p=389531"},"modified":"2024-05-01T00:04:33","modified_gmt":"2024-05-01T00:04:33","slug":"old-photo-reveals-problematic-wada-move","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/?p=389531","title":{"rendered":"Old photo reveals 'problematic' WADA move"},"content":{"rendered":"

The World Anti-Doping Agency on Wednesday defended the \u201cstrong reputation\u201d of its choice of veteran Swiss prosecutor Eric Cottier to review how it handled the case of positive doping tests by 23 Chinese swimmers.<\/a><\/p>\n

Cottier is \u201centirely independent\u201d of WADA and international sports, it said, even as scrutiny of him increased over his friendship with a long-time colleague who worked with the agency and his enquiries into German broadcaster ARD\u2019s previous investigation<\/a> of a separate Olympic sport.<\/p>\n

Cottier has been given until a few weeks before the start of the Olympics in July to report on WADA\u2019s acceptance in 2021 \u2014 in the months before the Tokyo Olympics and 2022 Beijing Winter Games held in a public health lockdown \u2014 of Chinese authorities\u2019 explanation that the swimmers were contaminated by a banned heart medication found in a hotel kitchen.<\/p>\n

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The positive tests, including for three Chinese swimmers who won gold medals in Tokyo, were eventually detailed April 20 after months-long investigations by ARD and the New York Times.<\/p>\n

Montreal-based WADA has since faced widespread skepticism from anti-doping officials, national swim teams and athlete groups about its decisions three years ago and picking Cottier.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

For 17 years through 2022, Cottier was the attorney general of Vaud, the home canton (state) of the International Olympic Committee where WADA has its European office in Lausanne.<\/p>\n

Choosing a prosecutor on the doorstep of the Olympic movement was \u201chighly problematic,\u201d Swiss anti-corruption expert Mark Pieth told The Associated Press on Monday.<\/p>\n

During the last 13 years that Cottier was chief public prosecutor, the Vaud police commander was Jacques Antenen, who also worked with WADA from 2018 until last December as supervising auditor of the doping watchdog\u2019s investigations team.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think it\u2019s highly problematic and it\u2019s totally unnecessary,\u201d Pieth said of WADA\u2019s selection process. \u201cIt shows they don\u2019t have the awareness of possible conflicts of interest.\u201d<\/p>\n

When Antenen retired from Vaud police in 2022, the service\u2019s in-house magazine published a photograph from the ceremony of him with Cottier captioned as the prosecutor having come \u201cto greet an old friend.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThe fact that he (Antenen) might know Mr Cottier professionally in no way compromises Mr. Cottier\u2019s independence in reviewing WADA\u2019s handling of this case,\u201d the agency said in a statement. It did not address a question asking if Antenen took part in nominating the special prosecutor.<\/p>\n

Pieth was contacted by Cottier after speaking with ARD in 2020 for its investigative reporting of financial corruption and cover-ups of doping cases at the International Weightlifting Federation, which had an office in Lausanne.<\/p>\n

\"Olyroos<\/p>\n

Though the Vaud prosecution office then led by Cottier inquired about the issues in weightlifting raised by ARD in January 2020, it is unclear if further steps were taken.<\/p>\n

The office did not immediately respond to questions sent by email.<\/p>\n

Antenen produced annual reports over six years on his oversight and advisory work with the WADA investigations team, which was involved in the Chinese swimming case.<\/p>\n

In his 2021 audit, Antenen said the WADA unit \u201calone cannot bear all of the responsibility for anti-doping investigations,\u201d and called for it to verify the skills of national anti-doping bodies like China\u2019s \u201cto promote the creation of effective, independent and honest structures."<\/p>\n

WADA has insisted since the ARD and New York Times reports that its legal, scientific and investigations managers agreed that evidence presented by China was consistent with the contamination theory and that all due process was followed.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The World Anti-Doping Agency on Wednesday defended the \u201cstrong reputation\u201d of its choice of veteran Swiss prosecutor Eric Cottier to review how it handled the […]<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":388473,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/389531"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=389531"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/389531\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":389534,"href":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/389531\/revisions\/389534"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/388473"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=389531"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=389531"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=389531"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}