Okay, thank you very much. Good morning, good afternoon, good evening to you all from wherever you are joining us. Welcome to this WADA media conference. My name is James Fitzgerald. I'm head of media relations at the World Antidoping Agency. As you know, there's been a lot of coverage in the media in the past few days following the publication of a story in the New York Times about a contamination case involving 23 swimmers from China in 2021. Clearly, there are many outstanding questions that members of the media have at this time. So we're pleased to be here to give you an outline of exactly what happened at each stage of the process and to answer those questions.
I'm joined by the WADA president, Witold Banka, WADA Director General, Olivier Niggli, and WADA General Counsel, Ross Wenzel, our Senior Director of Science and Medicine, Professor Olivier Rabin, and Director of the Independent Intelligence and Investigations Department, Günter Younger. After a few words from President Banka, I will hand over to Mr. Wenzel, who will go through the chronology of the case in some detail. He will then yield to Professor Rabin, who will explain the scientific aspects before handing back to Mr. Wenzel for a comprehensive assessment from a legal perspective. Mr. Younger will then provide a report as to what took place from the point of view of intelligence and investigations. At that stage, we will take questions.
We're happy to have been able to open this call up to all comers, including members of the broader anti-doping community. However, I would say that this is first and foremost a media conference. In order to facilitate the media in doing their work, we would ask that only working journalists raise their hand to ask questions. For members of the antidoping community who do have questions, as I expect some of you will, you can still send them through your usual channels to WADA and we will be happy to respond in that way. For journalists, if you have a question when the time comes, please raise your virtual hand in the normal way. Once you have been recognized, you will be asked to unmute yourself and then please give your name, the name of your outlet, and then obviously ask your question. Please do keep the questions short. We'd like to get through as many as possible in the time we have available, and speaking of which, we have to finish before 90 minutes for this call. We do intend to publish the full recording of the media conference as soon as possible on the WADA website, so you'll be able to see it there. So without any further delay, I would like to hand over to the WADA president, Witold Banca, to say a few words. Mr. Banca, the floor is yours.
Thank you very much, James. Good day to you from wherever in the world you are joining us. At the beginning, I would like to apologize for my hoarseness, but I have small illness. That is why my voice sounds differently, but no worries, this is not artificial intelligence. Since the publication of this story, we've been receiving many comments and questions. As James said, shortly I will hand over to our various experts who've been directly involved in this matter and they will be able to go through in detail exactly what occurred and when. I think it's important for us to be here so we can openly and comprehensively answer your questions.
Having spoken and length with our science department, legal offers department, or intelligence investigations unit, what I can say right now is at every stage, WADA followed all due process and diligently investigated every lead and line of inquiry in this matter. If we had to do it over again now, we would do exactly the same thing. We carefully reviewed the decision of the Chinese anti-doping organization from every perspective. We interrogated every piece of evidence and gathered further information as appropriate. As part of this review, we collected additional unpublished scientific information on the substance in question, TMZ, and then consulted with independent scientific experts to test the contamination theory. Further, no credible evidence of wrongdoing was provided by any source who came forward on this file, so the threshold for WADA intelligence and investigations to open investigation was not met.
WADA reviews every case and does not hesitate to take an appeal to the CAS as appropriate. We've done this successfully many times in the past and we continue to do so. We look at it on a case-by-case basis and considering all aspects of this particular case, the decision was taken not to appeal to CAS. Why not? We had no evidence of wrongdoing to present, and no credible way to disprove the contamination theory that was accepted by the ChinADA, a position that was also accepted by World Aquatics. In short, if you had taken such an appeal and challenged the contamination explanation, we would certainly have lost. That was the advice of our internal experts and the external legal counsel. That is the end result, everything that I've heard and seen since then leads me to be convinced that we made the correct decision. We are pleased to be here today with you to explain fully the circumstances that led us to that conclusion. It is, however, important before I conclude, to insist on the fact that based on the current evidence and still today, we are talking here about a case of environmental contamination that involves innocent athletes and not a doping case involving cheaters. Since this story was published, I've seen some critical comments that are clearly politically motivated. The fact is we apply the same standards and procedures regardless of the nationality of the athletes. For those who think we might be soft on Chinese athletes, it is worth pointing out that at about the same time our experts were reviewing this case in 2021, we were also at the CAS vigorously pursuing justice in the case of another swimmer from China, Sun Yang. So we will continue to protect in sport without fear or favor. And with that I would like to hand over to our experts to walk you through the facts of this case. Thank you.
Thank you very much. Now I'll pass over to WADA General Counsel Ross Wenzel, who will go through some of the chronology of this case.
Thank you very much Witold and James and everyone for joining. I, as James said, have been General Counsel of WADA. I took up that position at the beginning of 2022. And prior to that for over a decade I was in private practice external counsel to WADA and a number of other sports organizations. I was one of the lawyers in 2020, before I joined WADA, that was involved in reviewing this case externally.
I've dedicated my career to fighting for clean sport, and I take serious umbrage to any suggestion that I or any organization that I work for might be involved in some sort of cover-up of doping or even a lenient handling of the doping case for political reasons. I can honestly say that having prosecuted hundreds of cases for uh since 2010, most of them as external counsel, I've never once been subject to any sort of political or other interference. We've taken cases in that period of time against Polish athletes, Chinese athletes, U.S athletes, Canadian athletes, Swiss athletes, and athletes frankly from just about any other country that you can imagine.
With that said, now turning as James said to the chronology of these trimetazidine cases — I might often use the abbreviation TMZ because it's a bit of a mouthful. So Chinada collected 60 urine samples at a national swimming competition between the 1st and 3rd of January of 2021. After certain delays due to Covid, the samples were reported into WADA's information management system ADAMS on or around the 15th of March 2021. And there were 28 AAFs, adverse analytical findings, for TMZ, and these involved 23 different athletes, meaning that a small number of them, five or so, tested positive twice. In early April 2021, CHINADA informed WADA that it had initiated an investigation into the source of the TMZ and that it was conducting this investigation with the assistance of the public health authorities in China.
And from the outset, from April onwards, when WADA was advised of these cases, it was clear that there were indications that these cases could be a case of group contamination. And let me go through some of those indications. The first is that we were, of course, dealing with 28 positives, 23 athletes from different regions of China, different coaches, different swimming clubs. All of those athletes were in the same place at the same time the positives arose. And all of the sample results were consistently low levels. And Professor Rabin, WADA's Senior Director of Science, will give further detail on that when he addresses you shortly.
And perhaps one of the most important points is that, as I said, a number of these athletes were tested on multiple occasions. Some of them were tested on three occasions in consecutive days, and the results often varied between positive and negative. So positive, negative, positive, negative, negative, positive. And always at these low levels. ANd whereas Professor Rabin will address you in more detail on this, ultimately these fluctuating negative, positive results were not compatible with deliberate ingestion, not even micro dosing.
And I will also mention as another element that indicated that this could be a contamination as opposed to a deliberate ingestion of the prohibited substances was that certain athletes that participated in this event were staying at different hotels. The only athletes that tested positive were the ones that were staying at the hotel where the trimetazidine was ultimately found in the kitchen.
So we were advised, as I mentioned in April, that an investigation was underway. By the end of May, I believe the last day of May, if memory serves me correctly, the preliminary results of that investigation were made known by Chinada to WADA. And as I've already alluded to, the result of that investigation was the trimetazidine had been found at various places in the kitchen of one of the hotels where the athletes were staying, both in spice containers in the extraction unit above the hall, and also in certain drainage units
The next step was that on the 15th of June, so a couple of weeks later, Chinada sent to WADA its decision, which was effectively to ascribe the positives to environmental food contamination due to the findings in the kitchen. And they decided that they would not move, move forward with the case. They wouldn't proceed with them as anti-doping rule violation cases.
A few days after being notified of that decision on the 15th of June, 2021, WADA requested the case file. That case file was promptly sent to external counsel, including myself, but there were others in the team. And it was also of course made available to WADA's science department so that it could robustly assess the plausibility of the contamination scenario that had been accepted. And again, I don't want to forestall what Professor Rabin will say, but the feedback from WADA's science department was ultimately that the contamination scenario was not only plausible, but there was no concrete element to call it into question, to challenge it.
And indeed, the legal advice from the external lawyers, including myself at the time, but also a barrister from the UK, which thoroughly reviewed this case, including the scientific evidence and the opinions that were given by the various experts, was that an appeal to CAS was not warranted. And this advice was provided to WADA in mid-July, or early to mid-July, 2021.
So that was the chronology. I appreciate that there are further legal questions that have been raised by the media in the last few days, but before addressing some of those questions, I'll pass the floor back to James, perhaps, perhaps to give the floor to Professor Rabin.
So you've heard a bit of the chronology there, and we'll come back to Ross in a few minutes to talk more on those legal points that he mentioned, but now I'd like to hand over to our senior director of science, Professor Olivier Rabin.
Thank you, James. Let me run you through a few important scientific elements in this session, in this dossier. Maybe first of all starting with the fact that, as in any similar situation, the WADA science department requests all the scientific information on the case or cases which are usually received via the WADA legal department. This includes of course the substance or substances at stake, including also the urinary or blood concentrations related to those substances, and of course all the explanations that are provided by the athlete or the athletes in support of the adverse analytical findings.
In this very specific case of the chinese swimmers, the number of cases was of course extremely unusual. The urinary concentrations were quite low, they were most of them in the picogram per milliliter range, which is one billionth of a milligram, so this is very low concentration. And interestingly, as mentioned by Mr. Wenzel, there were, within the same competition, athletes were tested twice and up to three times for anti-doping tests. So that's information that was also extremely useful during this competition.
And as presented before by Mr Wenzel, what was also very interesting is that, for two athletes we had patterns of positive negative positive, and another one, negative negative positive. And for those who were tested twice, six of them presented negative samples followed a few hours apart by positive results, which in this situation and looking at the diversity of the profiles tend to usually indicate that trimethazidine was not deliberately ingested and rather points out to some form of contamination, and much less likely as I said to be compatible with the doping scenario with trimethazidine. Despite those evidence we continue to put the contamination hypothesis to the test. First of all we contacted the original manufacturer of trimethazidine to retrieve the maximum of information on the pharmacokinetic and excretion studies for this substance. We were provided with confidential information that is not even published in the scientific and medical literature and also this manufacturer kindly provided us access to the pharmacokinetic modernization of expression of trimethazidine that of course were adjusted to this particular situation and to the antidoping context.
Also in collaboration with the pharmaceutical company we tested the possibility of microdosing with trimethazidine even if there is no precedent for this substance to be used at microdoses. We thought we needed to to work on this possible hypothesis and whether microdosing would benefit the athletes who would have been exposed to trimethazidine. The samples again going from positive to negative, negative to positive, all the different combinations possible, led again to the hypothesis that it was not really compatible with an intake of trimethazidine, and the doses that were found in urine clearly indicated that the athletes were not under the influence of the pharmacology of trimetazidine during the event.
So all the information that were collected and analyzed by us indicated that the athletes were certainly not under the influence of the substance. And we compared the concentrations that were found in those urine samples during this particular situation to previous doping cases with trimetazidine, some including swimmers in China. And this analysis revealed that the concentrations were tens or sometimes hundreds of times higher than in those doping cases than in this dossier.
So since we're fully aware that the previous trimetazidine cases occurred in swimming, we also investigated the hypothesis that several athletes could have received trimetazidine pre-competition. However, looking into the data, there was no correlation that could be found, as Mr. Wenzel said before, between the athletes, their club of origin, the regions they were coming from, all the coaches who were training them. And I would add the fact that the athletes who tested positive, as it was mentioned before, were all staying in the same hotel and no swimmer was staying in hotels, other hotels tested positive for trimetazidine.
With all the information I just mentioned, and the fact that traces of trimetazidine were found by investigators in the kitchen and spice containers used at the restaurant, the fluctuation of low level of trimetazidine going from negative to positive also, and sometimes with samples taken a few hours apart. This led us to conclude that there was no reason to consider that it could not be a contamination scenario.
I will add that during the data review process, I've been in contact with a scientist working for World Aquatics to inform him that we were receiving information from the pharmaceutical company to refine WADA's calculation, and as I mentioned, exposure and expression of trimetazidine. In the course of this conversation, this scientist informed me that he was also considering the contamination scenario as being the most likely.
I would finally say that in the IRD program, there was a scientist who had been involved in reviewing the dossier and the case, and the experiments he conducted also considered that a contamination scenario is probable. So, this concludes my presentation. I will now conclude my intervention and back to you, James.
Thank you. Thank you very much, Professor Rabin. I hope that explains some of the science behind this story. I will go back now to Mr. Wenzel, who will explain some more from the legal point of view.
Thank you, James, and thank you, Olivier. I set out the chronology when I spoke earlier, and you've now heard the details of the scientific review that was conducted. I will now try and answer some of the more legal questions that have been raised in the media over the past few days.
One of those questions, and I will start with this one, is why there was no provisional suspension imposed in this case. As a preliminary point, under the World Anti-Doping Code and anti-doping rules that are promulgated under the World Anti-Doping Code, WADA has no authority itself to impose a provisional suspension. It is for the anti-doping organization that has the results management authority for the case. In this case, that would have been Chinada.
The second preliminary point to make is that the World Anti-Doping Code explicitly allows for anti-doping organizations to conduct a so-called and so-defined provisional hearing before imposing even a mandatory provisional suspension. That is Article 7.4.3 of the World Anti-Doping Code. The purpose of this, and of course anti-doping organizations also have the possibility to impose a provisional suspension straight away even before seeking an explanation, but the possibility exists to seek an explanation first. The purpose of that provision is to allow athletes the opportunity to explain how the substance got into their system and in their view why a provisional suspension should not be imposed. Do they meet any of the exceptions, for instance, for a mandatory provisional suspension?
The third preliminary point is that one of the circumstances in which a mandatory provisional suspension does not need to be imposed or can be lifted is in a case where it is likely a case of contamination. And indeed, many anti-doping organizations, including World Athletics to give one example, have further rules in which they say that even a mandatory provisional suspension is not necessary in other scenarios including for instance where it's likely that the athlete will be able to establish that no period of ineligibility should be imposed, including for instance, where it is likely that the athlete will be able to establish that no period of ineligibility should be imposed, for instance, if it is likely they can establish that it is a case of no fault. Just to give the reference for that, that is article 7.4.4b of the World Athletics anti-doping rules.
In this case, as already explained, and I will not go over all of the elements that I mentioned previously, but there were a number of indications at the outset that this could well be a case of contamination as opposed to a case of deliberate ingestion of prohibited substances. I mentioned and you have heard from Professor Rabin about the fluctuating negative positive values, and also the element that it was only the athletes from the one hotel that tested positive. The athletes that were subject to doping control from the other hotel or hotels were not positive. Given the circumstances in this case, a form of block, a block of positive test results of adverse analytical findings, and given that in the region, in fact, in the interim, there had been an outbreak of another outbreak of the COVID pandemic, there are obvious problems, I would suggest, in asking each of these athletes individually and separately to investigate and seek to explain the source of the trimetazidine, the TMZ, within the context of a provisional hearing.
So Chinada took the decision to initiate this investigation. As I said, WADA was informed about this in early April, together with the public health authorities. And frankly, we took the view that it was not unreasonable in the specific circumstances of this case to allow that investigation to proceed diligently. That investigation, as I mentioned previously, led to the conclusion that the TMZ was as a result of environmental food contamination. And ultimately, again, as I mentioned earlier, the 15th of June decision, CHINADA decided not to pursue these cases as anti-doping rule violation cases. So, at that point, the matter was decided on the merits, as it were, and the question of a provisional suspension fell away. And at no point before the 15th of June was there any appealable decision that WADA could, if it had wanted to, have taken to the CAS or other appeal instance.
So, that is to deal with the reason why a provisional suspension was not imposed. The other question that has been raised frequently is why were these cases not published, and I'll try and deal with that now. Again, and it's the same point that I made with respect to provisional suspensions, it is not under the code or code-compliant anti-doping rules, it's not for WADA to make the mandatory public disclosure. It's not for WADA to publish anti-doping rule violations. It's for, again, for the anti-doping organization with results management authority.
Public disclosure, and perhaps it's worth just setting out what that is. When there is an anti-doping rule violation, and that anti-doping rule violation has become final, including any appeal instances that have been exhausted, certain limited information about the case must be published within a period of 20 days after that decision becoming final. And that is, for instance, the name of the athlete, the sport, the substance, the violation, etc. Not necessarily the decision and all of the detail of the cases. But public disclosure is one of the consequences of an anti-doping rule violation. If you look up the definition of consequences in the World Anti-Doping Code, you will see that the last one of them, I think it is, or certainly one of the last ones, is public disclosure. But it requires an anti-doping rule violation to have been established in order to be triggered. In other words, you are not obliged to make public disclosure unless the anti-doping rule violation has been established.
So here, as I've already mentioned, Chinada decided not to proceed with anti-doping rule violation charges against the 23 athletes that were concerned. And as a result of that, there was no basis at that time for them, and still less for WADA, to make any sort of publication about these cases. If WADA had chosen to have done that, it would have been a breach of the code and a breach of the privacy standards.
Now, theoretically, WADA could have appealed the decision to find that there was no ADRV or that the cases would not be pursued as anti-doping rule violations. WADA could have appealed that to the CAS. As is clear from what Professor Rabin has said and what I've said earlier, if we had done that, our position would have been to accept the contamination scenario, to accept that the athletes bore no fault, but nonetheless, theoretically, WADA could have appealed against the decision to close these cases with no violation to the CAS, seeking a finding of violation with no fault. And as I mentioned, based on external advice, WADA did not exercise that right of appeal. And let me be clear what that appeal would have been about had WADA chosen to have made it in July 2021, shortly before the Tokyo Olympic Games. It would have been a case, there would have been 23 appeals against athletes that we accepted were innocent or no fault in respect of their violation and that were contaminated through environmental or food contamination. And let me also be clear that if we had lodged that appeal, no publication could have been made, even if we were successful. And at the end of the CAS proceedings, we'd have established that this was a violation with no fault, which could have been a basis for publication. But we would have had to have waited until the end of those CAS proceedings for there to be any sort of basis for publication. And that would have taken at least six, if not nine or 12 months or longer in order to achieve.
So let me be clear that even if we had lodged that appeal, the athletes would have still competed at the Tokyo Olympic Games. WADA would not have been seeking any period of ineligibility against them at all. And let me also be quite clear that if we had lodged that appeal, which we chose not to, we wouldn't have been seeking any disqualification of subsequent results after the in-competition results in which the positive samples arose. There would have been no basis, given that it was a no fault case based on the case law to have sought disqualification of subsequent results.
And so, ultimately, we took the view that appealing these cases, when we accepted that the athletes were innocent, had no fault in order to get a decision perhaps one year later that there was a technical anti doping rule violation with no fault, simply did not make sense and wasn't fair. It wasn't fair on the athletes in particular, because it would have forced the athletes to respond on the eve of the Tokyo Olympics games, to legal proceedings against them, despite the fact that it was recognized that they bore no fault.
And let me also say that WADA has never, at least since I've been involved with WADA's litigation since 2010, appealed a case of no anti-doping rule violation in order to obtain a finding of no fault violation; that has never happened. I also want to stress that this case is not without precedent. There are other examples, often involving contamination of groups of athletes, food or environmental contamination. There are multiple examples in the past involving WADA, where an ADO (Anti-Doping Organization) has decided not to bring forward the case as a result of the violation of the law, and WADA, whether or not it would have agreed technically with that approach under the code, has decided not to appeal in order to obtain a finding of no fault.
To give one example — and obviously, I won't give names or nationalities — there was a case involving a significant group, more than 10 athletes, that occurred on US soil in 2014. After investigation, the case was described by the results management authority, and also WADA accepted this, as meat contamination. That case did not give rise to a provisional suspension of any kind on any of the athletes, and also, it was not proceeded with as an anti-doping violation.
That concludes my presentation, James, at this stage.
okay thank you very much um questions are starting to come in from the media but before we take those um I'd like to to uh hand over to our director of intelligence and investigation, Günter Younger, who will give his perspective from the INI side of this particular story
Thank you, thank you, James, and good day to everyone on this call. Let me explain the situation from the Intelligence Investigations Department's point of view, and let me start by talking about the confidential information that we have received related to this case.
Indeed, I can confirm that we have received one report from the ITA and one email from USADA about uncorroborated information from an unvetted source who has not provided any evidence and has refused follow-up attempts to communicate about the testing incident of the Chinese athletes. The uncorroborated information alleged that Chinese authorities hid the results. No further details were provided in these messages. So, we immediately looked into these files in our system, and all of them were reported. With regards to the ITA, we had a very comprehensive discussion with them, and what we knew is that they were never able to meet with the source, and were not in the position to collect further evidence. With regards to USADA, we provided the outcome of our inquiry and requested whether the source could provide any additional information. We even offered to speak with them directly if they were open to it, but they never responded despite their assurances to keep us updated.
As part of our assessment, we consulted our colleagues from the Science Department and Legal Department about their opinion of the case, and we learned that, as Professor Dr. Rabin just explained, considering the fluctuation of positive and negative tests, the very low concentration, and the composition of the athletes, it didn't corroborate the hidden theory. So, for the assessment, neither our scientific nor legal experts uncovered any signs of manipulation, misconduct, or conspiracy.
To summarize, our own assessment indicated that three agencies, including our own, had received uncorroborated information from a source who refused further contact. That information was not supported by our information holdings, our science and legal experts. None of the agencies could provide any evidence or contact. As such, we decided there was no impetus to investigate. However, at every occasion, we solicited further information and kept the door open to reopen the file.
And please allow me also to comment on our colleagues from USADA who completely misrepresented the one and only exchange of this case. Given USADA has quoted an email from our department, I would like to read from the section that was left out. As quoted in the New York Times article, we did advise we remembered the allegations quite well. However, we also stated, we held discussions with the ITA regarding the same intelligence. We advised that the source never provided any evidence nor could they back up their claims. We followed up with our science and legal department who did a thorough review. And yes, we did advise that there was no impetus to investigate, because — and this was left out — no evidence or compelling evidence or intelligence were presented. And now I'm going to quote the final paragraph of our email. "I have attached a previous report received from USADA on Chinese swimming. Are these recent allegations from the same source? If they have any evidence to back up their claims, we would be happy to reassess. If they are available for an interview, we would also be open to speak with them. Let us know." And we never received any response until the article came out.
Finally, all this information was shared confidentiality to protect sources, their information and ensure athletes' personal information does not find itself in the public forum. We always put the confidentiality of sources and our partners first. We are deeply concerned by leaked confidential information that has the potential to endanger our biggest assets, which are our whistleblowers. I hope that our partners feel the same way. Thank you.
Thank you very much, Gunther. So that gives you some background information, quite detailed I would say, but I'm sure there are still, well, I know there are still some questions as well coming in so far. So just to reiterate, this is an opportunity for journalists only to ask questions. If those journalists do have a question, please raise your virtual hand in the normal way. Once you've been recognized, you'll be asked to unmute yourself, maybe just wait a couple of seconds so the system can catch up. Then please do give your name, the name of your outlet, and then go ahead and ask your question. Please keep the questions short. We want to get through as many as we can. And so I would, I will start the ball rolling here. Let me just check who is looking. We'll start with Graham Dunbar. Graham, please unmute yourself and you can ask your question.
Okay. Thank you, James. I hope you can hear me. [Yes, go ahead.] Thank you. A question I think for Olivier Niggli, just on the optics of the fact that China has been the most generous donor to WADA in the past few years, maybe that was because they had a Winter Olympics approaching. Are you comfortable with the optics of those billion dollar donations over and above what other nations were giving WADA?
Thank you, Graham. Well, I think if you look, if you look at the numbers in the Asian region, you will see that China is actually far from being the biggest contributor to WADA in anti-doping. It's true that on two occasions they made donations which were primarily used for scientific research. And you will remember there was a call made by the IOC to pledge some money for that with matching payment from the government. All this was done in total transparency, and frankly, you heard the explanation today, has absolutely nothing to do with what we're discussing today. So the optics is a question of appreciation. But I have absolutely no problem with the relationship we have with China.
Okay. Thank you for that question, Graham. We'll move next to Wakako Yuki. Wakako, please unmute yourself. Just wait for the system. And I think there you can go. Wakako, we can't hear you. Can you hear me? You should be unmuted now. Yeah, I guess so. Yes, go ahead.
Okay. Thank you for the opportunity. And thank you for the detailed explanation. Indeed. What was, may I ask, what was the report? If you could disclose, what was the background or reason that those TMZ, well, concentrate, I mean, TMZ was found in the kitchen? What was the theory that Chinada gave you? And was there any way possible for you to follow that theory up? Because this is prescribed drug. And I was a bit appalled to learn that the contamination theory, although on the side of the substance, as well as science, yes, I understand how you come up to that conclusion. At the very beginning, why at all it was found in a kitchen? Thank you.
Perhaps I can answer that. [Yes, go ahead, Ross.] Wakako. Look, I can say a few things. The ultimate source, meaning how the TMZ got into the kitchen was not discovered. Chinada and the authorities conducted a number of interviews in order to try and explore how the substance could have gone into the kitchen. But that didn't result in anything concrete and they didn't hypothesize in their report. What I can say is that if we had appealed to the CAS to challenge the contamination scenario in circumstances where there were strong indications that this was not a deliberate ingestion but a contamination. And I'm not going to go over all of those elements again, but in particular, fluctuating negatives and positives, the low levels, etc. If WADA had made the point before CAS that the athletes had not met their burden to establish the origin of the TMZ on the balance of probabilities, given that, but also given the fact that TMZ was found in the hotel in which they were staying, I don't believe we would have even had 1% of chance to succeed in that argument. So to answer your question, I won't hypothesize as to how it might have happened. But certainly it would have been sufficient given those two things to meet the athletes burden of proof to establish the origin in their sample.
Perhaps maybe just one further comment, which is that I've obviously watched the ARD documentary and seen the experiments that were done with respect to rubbing trimetazidine pills in a person's hand or dropping them down a stairwell to see if any parts broke off or rubbed off, as it were. But of course, and I'm speaking purely theoretically now, pills are often taken, they're often cut and they're often crushed before they're taken. And that indeed was the evidence, albeit not accepted, but that was the evidence that was put forward in the case of Kamila Valieva as well, in terms of the grandfather's use of the medication.
Okay, thank you. Thank you, Wakako, for that. We'll move to Tariq Panja, please. Okay. Hi, can you hear me? Yes, go ahead, Tarek.
Thanks for the opportunity to ask a question. Just, you mentioned the COVID scenario. Could you tell us a little bit more about that? Because the tests were in January right at the start, the first three days. It took two and a half months for the test to be confirmed in March. In the Chinada report, it seems that they have said there was a 30-day COVID protocol where the test had to be frozen. What about the other month and a half? Were you wondering, did you ask them what was going on there? And then also a follow up to something Ross said, I don't know whether when you were at [Carades?] or when you were moved in house, I don't know what your involvement was. But you mentioned, because of COVID, they couldn't have hearings. But the rest of us were having multiple meetings on Zoom. Valiéva, in fact, had a hearing on Zoom. And the other thing you didn't mention in the concentration, I don't know whether it was the scientists or you, Valiéva also had extremely low levels of the TMZ in her sample. That wasn't seen as an issue. So could you just please comment on those? Thank you.
I'll maybe deal with a few of those, Tariq, and then Olivier or Rabin may or may not have something to add on the analytical side. But, you know, first of all, tremetazidine is a relatively complex analysis where additional analysis has to be conducted, for instance, to exclude that the source of the tremetazidine was lamerazine. I won't go into details unless perhaps Professor Rabah can. [Sorry, that wasn't my question.] No, no, but you asked about what else was going on in the month and a half. And what I'm trying to explain is that the analysis itself would have taken a good amount of time before obviously the analytical results could have been reported. What I meant when I was talking about the provisional hearing was that in that region, at that time, after the collection of the samples in early January, there was, and this is mentioned in the report, a breakout of COVID in that region. What I was suggesting was not that a virtual hearing couldn't have taken place, but rather that it would have been extremely difficult, if not to say impossible, for the athletes individually and separately to start trying to investigate the source of the tremetazidine, for instance, by engaging scientists or others to conduct experiments at the hotel. That was what I meant. And therefore, it made sense that instead of a provisional hearing in the usual sense of an athlete looking to discover the source and providing explanations to the anti-doping organisation, it made sense that it be done centrally by those that had access to the relevant facilities.
And with respect to your third comment, which is the concentration in the Kamila Valieva case, it is public; it's in the decision. It was 2.1 nanograms per ml. The vast majority of the concentrations in this case were significantly lower than that. But the fundamental point is not that one. The fundamental point is that in the Valieva case, there was nothing to exclude that that was the end of an excretion, that the pharmacological dose of tremetazidine hadn't been taken several days before. In this case, the fluctuating negative and positive values of those athletes, that were tested on multiple occasions, effectively excluded that pharmacological dose scenario. So that's a significant difference with the Valieva case.
The other significant difference with the Valieva case is that ultimately the explanation that Ms. Valieva put forward initially for the CAS ad hoc tribunal in Beijing was not supported by the pharmacokinetics, by the excretion profile of Tremetazidine at all. She then, her story, her explanation then evolved to a strawberry dessert that had been given to her by her grandfather that she consumed closer to doping control. And there simply wasn't any evidence, as is set out clearly in the CAS decision on the Valieva case, of that. Whereas here we have tremetazidine that was actually detected in the kitchen of the hotel where the athletes were staying and eating. And we had no evidence of any sort of skullduggery or planting of tremetazidine. It would have been impossible for us to go to a tribunal and ask them to draw that inference without any evidence. I hope that answers some of your questions, Tarek.
Thank you, Ross. Professor Rabin, did you want to add to that?
Just one brief point to add to what Ross just said, is that during the pandemic, there was a protocol that was requested from anti-doping laboratories, including, of course, the Beijing laboratory that did conduct the analyses. As you will appreciate, when we talk about urine samples or blood samples, there is an obvious biohazard related to the presence of this SARS-CoV-2 virus during the COVID-19 pandemic. And we established a protocol to ask the laboratories to freeze the samples at minus 20 degrees Celsius for at least two weeks, in order for them to receive information whether any of the athletes was positive for SARS-CoV-2 and their sample would present a biohazard risk. So for at least two weeks and often more, samples were frozen during that period of time by the anti-doping laboratories, so that does also explain the additional time to conduct the analysis. Thank you.
Thank you professor and thanks for the question Tarek. Next question is from Craig Lord. Please unmute yourself and go ahead.
Hi, hello, can you hear me? [Yes, Craig, go ahead.] Hi, thanks, it's really a question of trust. Obviously, you have to treat all your partners and countries in similar ways, but do you have any concerns that taking the word of a Chinese state security operation, and that is what effectively those are the people who tested the whether there was a presence of anything in the hotel, they are the people feeding you this information. It didn't come directly from Chinada; it came from state security services. Do you not have any concerns that that doesn't give you a good enough neutral view of what's actually happened?
Maybe I can jump in. Thanks for the question Craig. I mean, what I can say as a lawyer is that we didn't have any evidence that there’d been anything untoward that had gone on. If the, if the what's underlying the question is a thesis that this might have been planted in the kitchen, and then that gave rise to the detection, we didn't have any evidence of that, and as I said before, I'm very confident that if we'd have gone to the CAS with all of the five or six elements that I mentioned that already suggested contamination, as opposed to deliberate ingestion, coupled with the detection in the hotel kitchen and the absence of any evidence of any sort of misconduct of the kind that I think you might be alluding to — I'm very confident that we would have had close to a zero percent chance of succeeding in establishing that the athletes had not met their burden to show the origin of the prohibited substance on the balance of probabilities.
Okay, thank you. Thank you for the question. Next question is from Thierry Vildary. Thierry, please unmute yourself and ask your question. Can you hear me? Yes, Thierry.
Okay, thank you for allowing me to have a question. So, if I understand well, the biggest problem for me is that we have to believe that you believe Chinada, you believe the athletes, but you weren't able to check any evidence on-site, and you believe the public security of China two months after the tests. So maybe contamination is possible, but you couldn't check anything by yourself, and that is a problem, especially in a country where you are not allowed to move freely. So, there is one thing that means that your scenario is very difficult to swallow. And to be frank. And second, I will ask you, there are questions here, Mr. Banka, if this story will maybe push you to change some rule in the code. Thank you.
Okay, thank you. So maybe on that first point that Thierry was making, Professor Rabin, did you want to respond to that?
Yes, thank you. What is important to understand is, yes, we received information from China, but well beyond the information we received, we conducted our own analysis of the information and also, in particular, based on the urinary concentrations and the profiles in the urine that were collected from the athletes who tested positive. And as I said, and as I explained, beyond this, we did calculations, we looked very deep into the pharmacokinetic and the pharmacology of trimetazidine, and there was no reason to believe from this independent information and independent review that there was any way to question the contamination aspect. So, it's not just the information we received from China; it's also our own information, the collection of this information, the deep analysis of this information conducted with external scientists independent from WADA who are very knowledgeable in the substance and the use of the substance and its expression, that we came to our conclusion. So it's not just based on what we received from China. I want to insist on this. Thank you.
Okay, thank you. And, uh, I think Mr. Banka, you've been asked about any potential changes to the code following this case.
Currently, we are under the revision of our code and we have a broader consultation. So, if it's necessary, we are always open to review our rules to strengthen the anti-doping system. But in this particular case, I would like to stress again that we follow the process and we don't see any room for improvement when it comes to this particular process.
Okay, thank you. Next question from Alan Abramson.
Good morning everyone. I note that there were other hotels. This seems to have been missed out on in much of, if not all of the reporting that I've seen so far. Do you all have any ideas how many other hotels there were and how many athletes there were in total involved in this entire episode? Thanks, and thanks for the opportunity to ask this question and have this news conference. Thanks.
Thank you, Ross. You might answer that one.
Yeah, Alan, I don't have the specific data. I know that there was at least one other hotel where athletes that were competing in that event were staying. In terms of the overall number of athletes that were competing at that event, I don't have that information today, but certainly, we can get that.
Okay, thank you. And there has been a question from Robert Frozzi, but he seems to have taken his hand down, so we'll move to Louise Radnofsky. Please, Louise, from Wall Street Journal.
Thanks, thanks very much. I actually wanted to ask Ross a similar question to what Thierry brought up, which is, is there anything about the code that you feel got in the way of being able to do this properly or the way you would have liked to, that you might want to change in the future, even if it's for optics rather than for faith in the system, rather than for any other reason?
Okay, I think WADA deals with, somewhere between two and three thousand anti-doping decisions per year, which it reviews, and it obviously doesn't have the ability to send teams on the ground to investigate explanations that are provided in each of those thousands of cases. Of course, this is a significant case given the number of athletes, the level of the athletes, and the timing just before the Olympic Games.
This might have been a case where, in other circumstances, one could have considered verification on the ground. It simply wasn't possible given the fact that there was a lockdown in the region at the time. What I would say is that, in the case, for instance, where I mentioned of the 10-plus athletes that were positive for a prohibited substance that was ultimately ascribed to meat contamination in the US, I know that there was, because it was possible at the time, some investigation that was done on the ground by WADA in that case. So, it's something that WADA is able and willing to do if it's necessary, but in this case, given the circumstances which were unique, it was not done, and it was not possible to do.
Okay, thank you, and thanks for that question, Louise. There are lots of questions, so we're trying to get through them all if we can. The next one is from Marco Bonarrigo. Marco? Yes, can you hear me? Yes, we can hear you, Marco. I've been told to ask everybody the outlet they're representing as well, so if all the people asking questions could just state where your outlet is, and we'll go from there.
Okay, Marco Bonarrigo from the Corriere della Sera. Thank you for the explanation. You know, when we talk about contamination, in order to be acquitted, the athletes are always asked to explain the possible source of the contamination, as happened, for example, for clenbuterol. In this case, as you can imagine, it's really, really difficult for us to explain that. We have to imagine the presence of TMZ in such quantities to contaminate 23 athletes. My question is, were the Chinese athletes asking about the possible origin of TMZ? Because I have not been able to find a single case of TMZ contamination in the past. Thank you.
Thank you, Marco. Ross or Professor?
On the facts, I mean, certainly there was extensive investigative work that was done by Chinada and the Chinese authorities to try and discover the source, including interviews and questionnaires with all concerned. As I said earlier, ultimately the source was not discovered. With respect to trimethazidine as a potential contaminant, I mean, here we're not dealing with trimethazidine as a contaminant of a supplement or of a medication. We're dealing with, it appears, trimethazidine that is brought into a kitchen and then contaminated food or water or something of the kind. I don't know whether Professor Rabin has anything to add with respect to trimethazidine as a contaminant more generally.
Yes, thank you. To me, what is important to understand is that contamination is not just the substance, it's the context of a possible contamination. And even if the source of trimethazidine in this dossier not identified, what we can certainly consider is that an individual who had been prescribed with trimetazidine or was under the medication of trimetazidine and would have used it on-site in the restaurant could have very well contaminated the areas. So the fact that the spice containers were found with traces of trimetazidine in the kitchen as well, is not incompatible with somebody who would have used trimetazidine on-site and would have contaminated those elements.
As we've seen also in the ARD report, it's quite possible to have a contamination with trimetazidine, in particular if you crush the substance, I mean the pills, if you cut the pills or for whatever reason, if you put them in a liquid and let them dissolve before consumption. So all these elements are plausible in the global context of contamination.
Thank you very much. Thanks for the question. Next question is from Nick Butler.
Hi James, Nick Butler and Hajo Seppelt here. Thank you very much that you give us the opportunity to talk to you. It's the first time since a couple of years that WADA is talking to us now. Thank you for this opportunity. [Well, hang on.] I would like to continue, James. [We had a conference a couple of months ago.] Yes, can I say what I want. Can I say what I want. Thank you so much.
So the first question is, and maybe you can help me to understand that. Do you really want to tell us that WADA is trusting in a secret service intelligence unit from China who claims, and you say there's no other evidence, if you could trust in the evidence of a secret service, who maybe made up the story that there have been some traces of triamcinolone on the surface of some parts of the kitchen, after two and a half months, because after two and a half months still to find in the kitchen some traces of TMZ is, from my point of view, completely unrealistic, because in the meantime, there should have been some cleaning in the kitchen and not in two and a half months nothing has happened in that kitchen. I cannot believe that you trust in that information which comes from the Secret Service intelligence unit. That's the first question.
The second question is, I have the feeling that you, to a certain degree, try to confuse the audience here because, for example, you talk about the positive, negative, positive, negatives all over the place. And my feeling is that maybe you should also not leave out that we are talking about concentrations of TMZ which are close to the detection level, that means sometimes above, sometimes below the level, and if you are dehydrated or if you have more fluid in your body, that can happen. That you have, if you talk about low concentrations, and every scientist we talked to beforehand has confirmed that to us. These are biochemical experts on the same level as Olivier, who confirmed to us that it can happen if you have low levels, that it might switch from positive to negative and positive again. This doesn't explain, from my point of view, that this must be a contamination on the spot. It's also possible that it might occur because of doping which has been taking place a couple of weeks before, at least a couple of days before.
The last question I have is, we have pointed out in our documentary that there has been much less testing, much less testing in urine in the days and let's say three weeks before the competition. If you read the CHINADA report, or I would call it the intelligence report carefully, then you can see there has been an enormous amount of testing, at least relatively, in September, October, December. We have got this information also from other sources, confirmed. But in the days before the competition, there has been much lower, less testing. So, it's an ideal time window if you want to dope. You can do it at this place. Thank you so much.
Okay, thank you, Hajo. It's always a pleasure to welcome ARD to our press conference as we did six weeks ago in [?]. Next, yeah, would Professor Rabin like to respond to that or Ross?
Maybe I'll jump in first and then leave some of the scientific points to Professor Rabin if he has anything to add. But look, with respect to the first question, do we trust the Chinese authorities that did this? For me, I operate on evidence, and that's what the CAS would have to operate on as well in assessing whether or not the explanation should be accepted. And certainly, the CAS would not draw any sort of adverse inference or assume skullduggery simply because we were dealing with Chinese authorities.
So, I operate based on the evidence. And I've been clear, in my opinion, that given all of the circumstances of this case, if we'd have gone to CAS to try and contest the contamination scenario, we would have had close to a zero percent chance of success.
With respect to the limit of detection, I'll let Professor Rabin add anything to that. I'll let him come back. But that was one of the number. And I went through them before, five or six elements that all pointed towards contamination in this case.
And with respect to your last point, I saw that in the documentary. I don't know the exact testing figures. You didn't give them in the documentary, but I would say this. And that thesis assumes that the CHINADA is withholding tests at a period when it believes the athletes are doping. Not only is there no evidence of that, but it would then be remarkable that CHINADA, when the athletes were still positive at this competition, would conduct 60 urine tests, giving rise to 28 adverse analytical findings involving 23 athletes and report them into ADAMS. Thank you.
Yes, if I may add to the answers from Ross, to the questions from Hajo and Nick, I mean, first of all, at the risk of repeating myself, we didn't just take the information coming from China as a fait accompli. We also conducted our own analysis of the situation, including and vastly based upon the reporting by the Beijing Anti-Doping Laboratory. That obviously didn't hide information because all the concentrations and cases were reported into ADAMS from the beginning.
Now, coming back to your point about being close to the LOD or the LOI, because we don't just talk about detection, we talk about also identification of trimetazidine, which is valid for confirmation procedure if you want to be a bit technical. Some of the concentrations were well above the limit of identification by the Beijing laboratory. So it was not just plus-minus, it was also some of the concentrations that were reported that gave us confidence in the profiles that we analyzed.
And I will repeat what I said before, we even went as far as testing the microdosing hypothesis in conjunction with the input and information we received from the pharmaceutical company that is manufacturing trimetazidine. And it was obvious that at those concentrations there could not be any performance-enhancing effect or any biological effect. So it's not just one piece of information we have taken, we have combined different pieces of information, some of which I doubt the experts you consulted were aware of because they were privileged and confidential information provided to us directly by the manufacturer of trimetazidine. Thank you.
Thank you. Next question from Pat Forde. Yes, thank you for the time here. Two questions actually from... Let us know if it's Sports Illustrated, is it Pat? Sports Illustrated, yes.
Thank you. First being the multiple hotels. Do we know whether the hotel where the alleged contamination occurred was where all of the elite or high-level swimmers were or were they interspersed between multiple hotels? And secondly, I just want to make sure the timeline I have is correct that WADA received an intelligence report in September 2020 alleging Chinese doping concerns and then there were 23 positive tests and they were still deemed insufficient to find, to take to CAS. So I want to check the timeline of that, please.
Okay, thank you. Okay, thank you. Ross?
I suspect that the second question is for Gunter. I'll try with the first one. Look, Pat, it's similar to the question or questions that Alan asked earlier. I don't have that detail at the moment. I'm happy to look into it and provide it. What I know is that there were athletes that were competing at the same event that were staying in a different hotel or hotels, and that the only athletes that tested positive were the ones that were staying in the hotel where the trimetazidine was found. The detail in terms of the... I think, I have managed to find out that the total number of athletes, I think, was 201, but in terms of how many and at which level they were staying at which hotel or hotels, that I would have to look into and revert.
Okay, thank you. Mr. Younger, would you respond to the intelligence, please?
Yeah, absolutely. So yeah, I can confirm we have received in 2020 an intelligence report or a confidential report about Chinese swimmers. And it was the same scenario that we had with the other intelligence reports, that they all were not hidden, they all were in the system like they had to be.
Okay, thank you. Next is Simon Evans from AFP. Simon?
Yeah, thank you. In the statements, there is a reference to this being a political attack being made by USADA. I just wanted to... Just two things from that. One, are you suggesting that this is USADA making political attacks on WADA or that it reflects something in US-Chinese relations? And also, there's a fairly heavy hint that you might be considering legal action against USADA or Travis Tygart. Is that something that's underway or being considered? What's the status of that, please?
Okay, thank you, Simon. Is that a question for Ross?
Well, I can take the second part of that in terms of the references to political motivation. I will leave that to either Witold or Olivier.
Look, I think we're going to have to wait for the dust to settle on this. And then we'll go through all of the statements that have been made, both written and oral, in terms of the interviews that featured in the ARD documentary, the statements that were quoted in the New York Times article, the subsequent statements that have been made. And we will have to go through them, and consider with external counsel, whether or not it merits bringing legal action against the relevant entities and/or individuals.
But what is clear is that some of the comments that have been made, which suggested a cover-up of doping cases for political reasons, for example, couldn't be further from the truth. They clearly have the potential to damage WADA's reputation and therefore it is something that we will have to go through with a fine-tooth comb and take whatever action is necessary.
I would also suggest that it will be for Gunter and his colleagues to decide that we are dealing here also with serious breaches of the confidentiality provisions that are set out in the code and the International Standard for Results Management as well as the International Standard on Privacy and Data Protection. Confidential documents have been leaked to the public or the media and that will also be something that will require investigation, I would have thought, but that would be for Gunter and his colleagues to decide. I'll pass the floor back.
Maybe just one small comment about the political motivations. So I have to say that from our perspective, looking at the comments which were on social media and the official statements made by USADA, it's obvious that most of the comments are politically motivated, without any evidence that there was something on our side wrong.
Okay, thank you. Next question is from Jonathan Crane.
Yeah, can you hear me? Yes, Jonathan, we can. Yeah, Jonathan Crane from Deutsche Welle in Germany. Just a couple of things. I mean, you said you'd do the same thing all over again. So even if the COVID pandemic hadn't happened, would you still not have gone into China to investigate or would you have gone in?
And then the second one, just mentioning WADA's reputation. I mean, a lot of people are still going to have credibility issues with some of the explanations. So what do you say to those athletes who are going to be competing against some of these Chinese women in Paris and, you know, are worried that they're not going to be competing on a level playing field. They don't have trust in the system.
I mean, look, it was Witold that said that we would have done the same thing again. What I understood him to mean, and he can clarify his own words if he wants to and chooses to, but I understood him to mean that if we'd have been presented with the same facts that we were presented with at the time, we would have done the same thing. And therefore, you know, if it was in the middle of COVID, if there'd have been a sense in doing investigations on the ground in a different context, then we may very well have considered that and may very well have done that.
I think that, you know, in terms of what one can say to athletes, you know, this is something that this is an explanation that WADA, and not only WADA but also World Aquatics, scrutinized extremely carefully. That will be clear from what Professor Rabin has said and what I've said. And ultimately, based on a number of contextual elements, factual elements, but also on the science, we concluded that this was a case of innocent exposure. And, you know, that is our genuine conclusion with respect to what happened here based on the evidence that we had then and still have now. And therefore, athletes from other countries that are competing against these athletes should not have concerns. These were athletes that we have to assume were innocently exposed to trimetazidine contamination.
If I may just add one thing there, I think it's extremely important here to make this distinction, because the question, the way it's asked, infers that we are dealing with cheaters who may have been allowed to compete, and this is not what we're talking about. We're talking about just the opposite, which is that the system having protected a number of innocent athletes from being taken out of the sport. And I think you're all going to have to reflect on the fact that we have a very tough system in anti-doping. There's a lot of burden on the athletes, but we're also receiving regular calls, including from the US a lot, on the fact that we have to protect innocent athletes. And that's an example where, you know, based on the evidence that is available, which you may or may not believe, but that's the only one that's there, the system has allowed to protect a number of innocent athletes from being, you know, kicked out of the system. So the system works both ways and that's what has to be remembered.
Okay, thank you. Next question is from Tom Schad.
Yeah, can you hear me? [Okay, we can hear you loud and clear, Tom] Great. This is a question from USA Today, and thank you again for taking the time. A question about the public disclosure piece of this, and I believe you said that this wasn't within WADA's remit to disclose this. But Ross also was talking about how this is a substantial case given the number of athletes involved and the timing ahead of the games. I'm curious if there's anything that WADA could or should do to basically usurp more responsibility in terms of disclosing cases like these publicly and whether you feel that the athletes who competed in the Tokyo Games against these Chinese swimmers had a right to know that this investigation had happened, both the positives and what WADA did to look into it.
Okay, thank you, Tom. Ross, did you want to respond to that?
Thanks for the question, Tom. I mean, you heard what I said. Based on the code as it is, unless there is an anti-doping rule violation that is finally established, WADA could not require a public disclosure of these cases. You also heard what I said, which is that in... and I gave one example of a case involving more than 10 athletes in the US in 2014, but there are many other examples where there's been group contamination related to food or environment where these cases have been closed without provisional suspension, without an ADRV, and without public disclosure because it's been accepted that the athletes were at no fault and exposed to a prohibited substance through food or environment contamination, and WADA hasn't appealed in these instances. So this is not without precedent.
The question of whether or not there should be public disclosure in cases of no fault is an interesting one. Based on the code as it's written today, in principle, subject to the athlete being, for instance, recreational or a protected person, even in a case of an anti-doping violation with no fault, in principle, public disclosure is necessary. USADA, for instance, is one of the organizations that's been quite vocal in saying that cases of no fault should not be subject to public disclosure. It made that comment recently in connection with a track and field athlete. It's made it in the past as well in press releases. It's made that comment to WADA, and it's something that the code revision team is in the process of considering. But should there be public disclosure in a case where an athlete is at no fault and is, despite exercising the utmost caution, innocently exposed to prohibited substances? It's an interesting debate, and it's something that the code revision team for the purposes of the 2027 code is in the process of considering based on USADA's comments and others. Thank you.
Okay, thank you very much. Next question is from Edmund... Edmund Wilson. Edmund, go ahead.
Yeah, so Edmund Wilson. I work for various... I'm a freelancer. I work for various outlets. This is a question for Dr. Rabin. In the 2011 Alberto Contador case at CAS, in which WADA was a party and Mr. Rabin submitted a report, it was argued that the trace levels of drugs in Contador's system were from blood he had transfused into his system during the Tour de France. Contador also tested positive and negative during this competition. Did WADA assess any theories suggesting these Chinese swimming cases might have indeed been doping cases? And what were they?
Maybe if I could jump in on that before Professor Rabin gives a science answer to that, and that is that in the Contador case, you're right, there was a negative test six or seven or eight hours before the positive test, which was at a very, very low level. And WADA's theory, although not accepted by the tribunal, was that it could have resulted from a contaminated blood bag. But the significant difference between, or the obvious difference between the Contador case and this one is that whereas in the Contador case, there was no source of the clenbuterol that was discovered, and indeed there was significant evidence that there hadn't been any contamination of meat in the region for many, many years, and that was WADA's position, in this case, whatever suspicions one might have and have been voiced today, the fact is that trimetazidine was discovered in the kitchen of the hotel where the athletes were residing and eating. So that's a significant difference, but I'll give the floor to Professor Rabin.
Thank you, Ross. I was about to add the same about the source of contamination. I mean, clearly what is important in what we are doing when we review such dossiers or cases, and I said it before in my introduction to the scientific point of this case, of this dossier, is that we try to look from all different angles, possible angles, on whether the story makes sense or not.
And obviously, since you referred to the Contador case, not only in the explanations of the athlete, but also in the calculations we did on the exposure and excretion of clenbuterol at the time, plus the fact that we're talking about a country where clenbuterol or meat contamination of clenbuterol is quasi-impossible, as it was demonstrated during the CAS hearing of this case, made the likelihood and the hypothesis of doping use of clenbuterol much, much higher, and certainly the privileged hypothesis.
In this situation, again, we looked at all the information, we did the extra calculations that were needed, and then obviously, as I said before, looking not only to the pharmacokinetic expression, pharmacodynamic of the substance with privileged information from the manufacturer, we couldn't rule out the possibility of contamination, quite the opposite.
So, I mean, each case, when we review them, not only from the legal standpoint, but also from the scientific standpoint, stands with its own merit, and we look at them independently. And again, for the reasons Ross explained and I explained, to me, there are some very significant differences between those cases. Thank you.
Okay, thank you very much. We're getting close to the end of the 90-minute window we had, but we'll try and get through as many questions as we can in the meantime. Tracy Holmes is on the line. Tracy, please go ahead.
Thanks very much for that, and thank you very much for having this press conference and taking questions. Mine is with regard to many crises that happen inside sporting events and sports governing bodies, and it all stems from a lack of clarity at the beginning or a lack of transparency at the front end, and I'm sure that's been reflected on many times here.
But I'm also wondering about, you know, obviously, there's a sense that the Chinese are guilty because of past experiences, but what about the Chinese swimmers who are not, and the impact on them when they turn up in Paris now on a pool deck? And we've already heard, you know, statements from many swimmers around the world. And so, their responsibility, with a lack of transparency from governing bodies, whether it's WADA, whether it's in Chinese swimming, etc., and the impact on innocent people everywhere, not just who are not Chinese, but Chinese as well.
Okay, thank you, Tracy. Was there somebody you wanted to direct that question to? Can we maybe, Ross, or...
I mean, what I can say with respect to the lack of clarity is that I've been quite clear that, I mean, we have to, we promulgate rules that everyone has to follow. We must follow those rules ourselves. Those rules require that in order to make a public disclosure in a case like this, there would have to be an anti-doping rule violation. The only way that WADA could have compelled that public disclosure was if it had appealed to the CAS to convert a decision of no anti-doping rule violation into a decision of no fault. And for all the reasons I gave, we didn't do that, so it certainly wasn't a lack of transparency. We took all sorts of things into account, including also fairness to these athletes. But again, if we'd have gone to CAS, we would have accepted that these athletes had no fault. We would not have sought a period of ineligibility, we would not have sought disqualification of results, and we would not have got a decision until well into 2022. So, I would take issue with the suggestion, if that was the suggestion, that there was any lack of transparency.
And again, I don't know if this goes to the point that was raised earlier. Based on a review of the evidence — the evidence that we had at the time, and that we still have, there's been nothing new since we came to the conclusion, and we have to stand by this conclusion, that these should be treated as cases of inadvertent exposure to trimetazidine, and the athletes had no fault. That I can't really say any more than that.
Okay, thank you, Ross. Thanks for the question, Tracy. Next, we can go to Julian Linden.
Hi, James. Hi, James, Julian Linden here from the Daily Telegraph in Australia. Question really for anyone who wants to answer it. Look, there are a number of athletes from different countries around the world who have already served lengthy suspensions and missed their chance of going to the Olympics when they were shown not to have deliberately cheated. Essentially, they had contaminations as well. How do you explain to them that this is not a case of double standards when they've copped long bans?
Okay, thank you, Julian.
I mean, Julian, look, every case turns on its facts. There's contamination through a bodybuilding supplement that has warnings all over it, that you shouldn't take it, and that it may contain prohibited substances at one end of the contamination spectrum. And then there is, which might even be a case of indirect intent. And then at the other end of the spectrum, there are the environment, food contamination, contamination through intimate contact, and those, and certainly the food and the environment ones have always, almost without exception, been treated as no-fault cases. So all I can really say is that each case turns on its specific facts, and in particular, on an analysis of fault and intent.
Okay, thank you. Next question is from Alex, Alex Azzi, from The Guardian, I think.
Hello, yes, hi, it's Alex from Swim Channel. I have a question, it's all regarding to the fact, like I understand CHINADA has the responsibility, on disclose the names, or the fact, but since we reviewing the code as the [president?] state, you don't think, why the reputation was affected to the fact we keep all this process, unknown, and now exploded, affecting the whole system? You don't think it's time for us, us to get more transparency, and bring this to the code, because that will avoid all this and we are not discussing this right now we will focus on promote the sport thank you.
Okay, thank you, Alex. Ross? I mean, we've addressed the transparency question already, so...
I mean, I just repeat what I said, which is that the debate at the moment, raised by people like USADA, is that the code currently allows for, indeed requires, the publication of a case when it is a case of no fault violation and no fault. And the debate at the moment, raised by amongst others USADA, is in those no fault cases there shouldn't be any publication, and it's something that's being considered by the code team at the moment.
If I may add, it's a question about whether you want or not to expose the innocent athletes, right? We have to take into account that through publishing the names of the athletes without anti-doping rule violation, you expose the innocent athletes to and you can damage their image. So this is the discussion which is very important and our role is to protect innocent athletes as well.
Okay, thank you. Last couple of questions now because we're over time. Paul MacInnes, Paul from The Guardian. Okay, Paul, go ahead.
Thank you. It's just a sort of a procedural question. What would you have if you had had the full resources available to you to investigate this case and you had been able to go into China at that time in 2021? What would you have been able to do that you have not been able to do in this case?
Who is your question for, Paul? Sorry, Paul, can you direct your question?
I can explain from our side. Whenever we receive confidential information, we try to cooperate; we try to meet with the source, we try to engage with the source to understand the motivation. We try to find other sources that corroborate it and then see the threshold whether we investigate or not. But if we have, like in this case, where we have a source from different organizations saying more or less the same, we assume it was the same source, but it was not corroborated in our system, then we have the opinion from the legal and from the science department that for us, the threshold to start an investigation is not met on that.
In addition, we warrant what [?] said about Chinese authorities and whether we can trust them. I mean, for us as well, when we want to protect the athletes, why should I test them, report them positive, knowing that this will cause lots of problems to cover them later? So if I wanted to, I would not go this way, like the Russians did; before they report the positive, they remove them from the system so we could not see them. So this is where all these things that we discussed with the experience we have in our department is to identify any indications, and I can promise you if we find any indication that something is wrong, we would go after it. But in this case, with the information we currently have, we would not do anything different.
[French]
[French]
Thank you. Mr. Rabin, thank you very much for that. Last few questions now. We have Raj Ganesan, and the last question will be from Sonia Abad. We are way over time, unfortunately.
Thank you very much, James. I am speaking to you from India. When I look at the ADRV stats of the last two years that are available on the WADA website, I notice a number of no cases to answer. I want to know from WADA. Any of them can answer this question. How many of these no cases to answer are investigated by WADA and treated as closed? Because the Chinese case seems very similar. Twenty-three athletes testing positive. Obviously, there are no cases to answer. So, I want to know from WADA, how much is WADA interested in seeing how many of these no cases to answer are really valid? Because I noticed that between 10 and 15 percent every year, there are no cases to answer.
Maybe I can jump in, Raj. I mean, as I said, WADA reviews somewhere between 2,000 and 3,000 decisions, anti-doping rule violation decisions per year. And a decision not to move forward with a case is one of the types of appealable decisions, and each of them is reviewed by the legal department. If we have any concerns, of course, we request the case file. We liaise with other departments. And so the answer is that each of those cases of no case to answer will be scrutinized in the same way that this case was. Thank you.
Thank you. And lastly, Sonia Abad. Sonia. Hello, dears. Thank you for taking my question. This is Sonia from [WIORI?] news agency based in UAE. I have a question, and any of you can answer. The USADA CEO, Travis, he said that under normal procedures, athletes should have been disqualified and suspended provisionally, even if the result of their positive tests could be attributed to contamination. I know you guys spoke about it, but would you please answer it?
Okay, thank you, Sonia. I mean, this question has been answered before, but maybe for the purpose of completeness, Rolf.
I think you've heard what I said before. It is correct that if you have an anti-doping rule violation, even with no fault, then under the rules, there would be public disclosure, and this is important — there would be disqualification of the result, the in-competition result at which the sample was collected. There would not necessarily be disqualification of subsequent results after that. And as I mentioned before, in a case like this, there would have been really no basis where WADA would have been accepting, if it had appealed, accepting that it was a case of no fault, not seeking any period of ineligibility. We wouldn't have had any basis under the case law to seek disqualification of subsequent results. The reasons why there was not a provisional suspension in this case, and why in the end WADA did not appeal against the decision of CHINADA not to move forward, I explained in detail during my presentation. Thank you.
Thank you. Okay, thank you, Ross. We'll leave it there. We've been going for an hour and 45 minutes. I hope you found this session to be helpful, interesting, and if the media have any follow-up questions, feel free to come to me directly in the usual way, and I'll be happy to get back to you on that. In the meantime, we will be putting up a recording of this call as soon as we can get it all together. It'll be on the WADA website, and we'll put out a notification through social media on that, so you know that it's been posted. So thank you very much for your attendance, everybody, and hopefully, we will look forward to seeing you next time.