2024-01-02 19:23:48
The World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) has demanded “corrective actions” from Spain that must be carried out “urgently.” The organization based in Switzerland thus responds to the information revealed by elDiario.es that the State Agency Spanish Commission for the Fight against Doping in Sports (CELAD) has in a drawer the case of the sprinter Patrick Chinedu Ike, who tested positive for nandrolone in 2019 but that has not been filed and has been able to continue competing normally. The AMA states in communication with this newspaper that “undue delays in the processing of cases will not be tolerated.”
Anti-doping has hidden the positive result of a national team sprinter since 2019
The Ministry of Education and the Higher Sports Council, on which CELAD depends, have opened an investigation and have requested a report from the director of Anti-Doping since 2013, José Luis Terreros, on its management. He has also chosen to transfer some of these irregularities to the Prosecutor’s Office in case there is a crime in the anomalies.
The series of information about the Anti-Doping problems in Spain, with positives in the drawers, controls carried out with fewer than the proper agents and the number two of the CELAD prosecuted for falsehood, have reached WADA, based in Switzerland. “WADA is very aware of developments related to CELAD and is closely monitoring its activities to ensure that it complies with the World Anti-Doping Code,” explains a spokesperson in an email to this medium. Within that procedure, he continues, “we can confirm that there are a series of exceptional corrective actions that need to be addressed by CELAD urgently.”
The WADA spokesperson warns that it is not a request, but that “non-compliance will lead to a compliance procedure” against Spain. WADA states that it will ensure that CELAD pursues positive cases in accordance with the World Anti-Doping Code and warns: “Undue delays in processing will not be tolerated.”
Sprinter Patrick Chinedu tested positive for nandrolone in July 2019, at the Catalunya outdoor championship. However, he never received a file from CELAD. He only did so last November after an investigation by the Ministry of Education, which now manages Sports competitions. In addition, there are positives for a biological passport without sanction because the National Court, with the help of the legal services of the Ministry of Justice, annulled a sanction against the cyclist Ibai Salas.
The AMA has already had Spain on its radar several times. Spain has always been seen internationally as tolerant of doping. In the 90s, the main cycling teams moved to Spain due to the tolerance of these types of practices and also the large number of doctors with experience in autoblood transfusions and EPO use. Large police operations that the courts left in nothing -Puerto case- and some political statements -Zapatero being president, Moncloa showed its support to the cyclist Alberto Contador when he tested positive for clenbuterol and blamed it on a steak -, they did the rest.
The AMA has already withdrawn the accreditation of the Madrid laboratory and put the country under surveillance. In January 2022, after the entry of new anti-doping legislation, this international organization declared that Spain was once again complying with its World Code. In extreme cases, WADA can even exclude a country from the Games, as it did with Russia for state doping.
Open investigation at the Ministry
The AMA warning has reached the Ministry of Education. The Secretary of State for Sports and president of the Higher Sports Council, José Manuel Rodríguez Uribes, is following the case “with great concern,” according to a department spokeswoman. This same Tuesday, the CSD brought an internal report on these irregularities to the Prosecutor’s Office so that it can decide if it deserves to be reported to Justice.
Uribes, who was Minister of Culture and Sports between 2020 and 2021, when several of the irregularities now analyzed occurred, “is waiting to receive in the coming days the conclusions of the investigation that is being developed within the Ministry of Education, Vocational Training and Sports”. Furthermore, he “has asked José Luis Terreros for a report on his practice.”
Terreros, a doctor by training with experience in the sector, was appointed in 2017 and has survived five Secretaries of State from two political parties. The CSD, according to this spokesperson, affirms that “with all the elements of judgment the appropriate decisions will be made.”
The controversy over the deficiencies in the fight against doping in Spain and the warning from the World Agency to national authorities comes in the middle of the Olympic year. Starting at the end of July, Paris will host a new edition of the Olympic Games to which Spanish athletics intends to attend with a selection full of medal candidates: from the walkers Álvaro Martín and María Pérez or the jumper Ana Peleteiro to the long distance runners Mo Katir and Mario García Romo or the hurdler Asier Martínez.
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