Athletes have been leading WADA by the nose for years. The ingenuity of the scheme is amazing!

The World Anti-Doping Agency positions itself as a ruthless machine to cleanse sports of banned substances. After discriminatory decisions against Russian athletes, the agency’s reputation was already undermined, and now it turned out that WADA can easily and with impunity be led by the nose.

Three athletes have been fooling anti-doping activists for years, and their guilt cannot be proven.

Gaps in legislation

The WADA Code clearly requires all athletes in the Registered Testing Pool (RTP) to provide information about their whereabouts (training addresses, residences, etc.) every quarter. At the same time, they are obliged to make timely adjustments if changes occur.

Also, according to the rules of the International Standard of Testing and Investigations (ISIT), the athlete must be available for testing one hour a day between 6:00 and 23:00. For omissions, the athlete is given a warning. Three such cases and disqualification will follow.

In April 2022, WADA’s Intelligence and Investigation Department launched Operation Fenech. Its goal was to expose three unnamed Moroccan athletes with dual citizenship who compete for other countries but train in their historical homeland.

WADA has received information that these athletes took advantage of discrepancies in the Agency’s Code and Moroccan legislation, thanks to which they regularly avoided testing. According to articles 59, 60 and 63 of the Moroccan Code of Criminal Procedure, searches of homes can only be carried out between six in the morning and nine in the evening, even if the house has become the scene of a crime.

The agency’s investigation revealed that these athletes deliberately indicated that their testing window was after 9:00 p.m. local time, which automatically protected them from testing if they did not want anti-doping officers to enter their home.

— While in Morocco, athletes usually choose a testing time from 10 to 11 pm. Athletes are tested outside the country, but this is usually carried out in Europe and only immediately before competitions, says the final report of the WADA investigation.

It follows from this that during the out-of-competition period, unnamed athletes could easily do any manipulations with their bodies without any consequences.

“The law has been revised”

The desire to punish the athletes forced the commission to come to Morocco, but the officials were disappointed. It turned out that athletes choose the most difficult places for training in terms of logistics. So doping officers are not always able to get there.

Ultimately, the WADA operation ended in fiasco. Those in charge were forced to admit defeat. The report directly states that it was not possible to detect prohibited substances in the collected samples, despite the availability of information and indirect evidence.

On August 7, 2023, a meeting was held between WADA officials and representatives of the Moroccan Anti-Doping Organization (ASAD), where the Africans were informed of the disappointing results of the investigation.

— The President of ASAD reluctantly agreed that there was an inconsistency between the Code and Moroccan law. However, the president said that the Moroccan law had been revised and the government had approved new wording, the investigation said.

Most likely, this loophole will be closed in the near future, but it is not at all clear what WADA will do with athletes who have essentially gone unpunished for using the law in their own interests.