Editorial
Champion athlete Peter Bol hung out to dry by sports administrators
The cruel and questionable farce surrounding the initial provisional suspension of our middle-distance runner Peter Bol and his subsequent seven months in purgatory for a crime he did not commit surely shatters confidence in Australian officialdom’s anti-doping processes.
Athletics Australia and Sport Integrity Australia fiddled around behind closed doors while Bol was left to wear the mantle of an alleged drug cheat until last Tuesday, when the federal government’s anti-doping body suddenly issued a statement announcing it was abandoning its investigation into whether the 29-year-old champion athlete had used the banned synthetic substance EPO.
Australian 800m runner Peter Bol.Credit: Scott McNaughton
In January, Bol had been informed by SIA he had failed an out-of-competition drug test by World Anti-Doping Agency-accredited laboratories for the hormone in an A sample test. He was provisionally suspended, as mandated, by Athletics Australia pending the results of a second sample, a process supposed to be both private and in-house. Yet, his positive test result was mysteriously leaked to the media days before the Australia Day ceremonies. Coincidentally perhaps, he had been considered front-runner to be named Young Australian of the Year for his achievements at the Tokyo Olympics and Commonwealth Games in Birmingham.
In February, Bol’s provisional suspension was lifted following an atypical finding in his B sample. However, the athlete subsequently revealed that two independent laboratories had cleared him of using synthetic EPO. Further, he claimed “inexperience and incompetence at the Australian Sports Drug Testing Laboratory led to an incorrect determination”. The SIA ramped up its investigation, demanding his laptop, phone and access to his emails and texts, bank and credit card statements for the past five years and re-interviewing everyone in Bol’s camp.
The SIA was supposed to be a tougher version of its predecessor, the Australian Sports Anti-Doping Authority, but its anodyne “update on the Peter Bol matter” last Tuesday proved curiously self-justifying, suggesting there was nothing to see here: “Sport Integrity Australia acknowledges the significant public interest in this outcome. However, Sport Integrity Australia is required to comply with its obligations under the World Anti-Doping Code and its International Standards, and our legislative requirements, and cannot make any further comment in relation to the matter.”
For its part, Athletics Australia acknowledged Bol had been trapped in a damaging no-man’s land but said its hands were tied due to strict protocols: “This case raises very serious questions about the accuracy and consistency of EPO analysis.”
The World Anti-Doping Agency is reviewing current EPO processes. The federal Minister for Sport, Anika Wells, is on the agency’s executive committee, but Bol’s scandalous treatment has exposed a situation in Australia requiring more than a scientific fix.
Bol was named and shamed for an A-sample that was first said to be positive, then A-typical (which means it was neither negative nor positive), then months later considered negative. Hopefully, the EPO review may correct such mistakes. But the leaking of the information against Bol remains unaddressed: What organisation or individual benefitted most for leaking against him? Was it an attempt to stop an athlete with a cloud hanging over him being named in Australia Day honours? Or something else?
Around the world sports are such huge commercial enterprises that entertain and thrill billions of people, and it is paramount they should be protected from drug cheats and their enablers. But the integrity of the system used to bring doping to brook must also be beyond reproach.
The leaking of Bol’s failed first drug undermines the integrity and the probity of the organisations charged by government with ensuring sport in Australia remains clean. Officialdom has left us none the wiser and closed ranks. Wells should use her influence to have a parliamentary inquiry investigate why Bol came to be hung out to dry.
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