WADA must repair trust, says US athletes’ commission head

NEW YORK: Some athletes have lost trust in world anti-doping agency WADA after the body’s handling of failed drug tests in Chinese swimming, according to Team USA Athletes’ Commission executive director Elizabeth Ramsey.

Ramsey told Reuters Television there were concerns about the independence of an investigation into what had happened and called for further steps to be taken to ensure full transparency.

WADA has been under pressure since confirming media reports that 23 Chinese swimmers tested positive for the banned substance trimetazidine (TMZ) before the Tokyo Games.

China’s anti-doping agency cleared the swimmers of wrongdoing, deciding they tested positive after contamination from the kitchen of a hotel where they were staying. WADA’s science department then determined that scenario was plausible.

Ramsey, signatory to a letter to WADA last week, said trust was “a little broken” because policies and procedures appeared not to have been followed as in the past.

“I think right now, because of what’s happened, they need to earn that trust back,” she added in an interview from Indianapolis. “Once that trust is broken, or it feels compromised in any sort of way, it takes a lot to earn that back. And so I think right now there is a bit of a broken trust to make sure the system is operating as it should.”

Ramsey said WADA needed to show its operating independence to build back trust and there were plenty of questions to be answered as athletes prepared for Paris.