How a US anti-doping law fueled global tensions

In the tumultuous final weeks of Donald Trump’s presidency, he signed into law, with little fanfare, bipartisan legislation that gave the United States vast new powers to police doping at competitions like the Olympics.

The law authorised the Justice Department to criminally prosecute coaches, trainers, doctors and sports officials from around the world involved in facilitating doping, even if the event was held outside the United States.

Nearly four years later, simmering anger among global athletic authorities about use of the law has exploded into public conflict. That has left the Olympic and anti-doping movements unsettled as the Summer Games prepare to open on Friday in Paris and raised new questions about the reach of US law enforcement powers abroad.

The Justice Department is continuing to investigate whether Chinese anti-doping authorities and the World Anti-Doping Agency — the organisation, known as WADA, that is supposed to ensure a level playing field in sports — covered up the positive tests of nearly two dozen elite Chinese swimmers who went on to win medals at the last Summer Games.

Some of those swimmers are competing again in Paris.

The backlash from the investigation intensified Wednesday when the International Olympic Committee announced that it had awarded the 2034 Winter Games to Salt Lake City. The award came with a stunning catch: The committee, deeply unnerved by the US investigation, insisted on the right to rescind the decision if the United States continues to take actions “where the supreme authority of the World Anti-Doping Agency in the fight against doping is not fully respected.”

The move set up a situation in which the bid may be contingent on the results of a Justice Department and FBI investigation and led to new salvos between two camps. On one side are the IOC and WADA, and on the other are Travis Tygart, head of the US Anti-Doping Agency, Congress and advocates for athletes.

Tygart, who came to prominence for successfully pursuing doping cases against track star Marion Jones and cyclist Lance Armstrong, has long contended that WADA is insufficiently dedicated to holding dopers and their enablers to account. He has made powerful enemies in the world of athletics along the way.

Working the halls of Congress during the Trump administration, Tygart, along with decorated American Olympic athletes, lawyers and even a top official at WADA who has since left the agency, worked to build support for a law intended to address the issue. He assembled a broad bipartisan coalition that included lawmakers who otherwise had little in common, like liberal Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee, D-Texas, who died this month, and conservative Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio.

Angered by the IOC and WADA’s handling of one of the biggest cheating scandals in sports history — a systematic doping program in Russia — Congress named the legislation for Grigory Rodchenkov, a former Russian laboratory director turned whistleblower. Rodchenkov’s evidence was vital in unmasking the yearslong state-backed scheme.

The law relies on the WADA code to define doping and applies it to only those sports, like the Olympic Games, that follow it. But the U.S. law cannot be applied to athletes — only those who help athletes dope can be prosecuted under it. The events it applies to have to be sponsored by American companies, backed by American money or broadcast by an American company. And the event must include at least one American athlete and three other foreign athletes.

To its critics, the Rodchenkov Act is an example of American overreach and hypocrisy because it cannot be used against the biggest and richest sports leagues, like the National Football League, Major League Baseball, the National Basketball Association or the National Collegiate Athletic Association, because they do not follow WADA’s code.

The bill easily cleared the House and Senate and landed on Trump’s desk at the end of 2020, creating a framework that allowed the United States to become a global criminal enforcer that both relies on WADA’s code and could rival its authority.

WADA and the IOC had hired lobbyists in Washington to block the passage of the bill. After the disclosure this year of the Justice Department investigation, WADA and the IOC have launched furious counterattacks. They contend that the law risks undermining a globally accepted system to combat doping and sets the stage for competing legislation from other nations.

“What if China, Russia — I don’t know — Poland, Germany create a law with the same impact, giving themselves the right to investigate anti-doping cases in all parts of the world?” Witold Banka, the president of WADA, said this week.

“We’re going to have a mess,” he said. “So this is completely unfair and it’s unacceptable.”

Mark S Levinstein is a longtime Washington defense lawyer who has represented coaches, players associations and athletes, including serving as one of Armstrong’s lawyers when he went up against Tygart’s agency. He said in an interview that the move by the IOC to put conditions on the offer of the 2034 Games continues “50 years of corruption covering up government sanctioned use of performance-enhancing drugs dating back to before East Germany in the 1970s and 1980s.”

“Trying to use the award of the Olympics to extort the cover-up of corruption that will allow certain countries to intentionally send performance-enhanced athletes to compete is reprehensible and involves the IOC in the criminal conspiracies the courts are trying to prosecute,” Levinstein said.

The law secured its first conviction in 2023 when Eric Lira, a therapist based in El Paso, Texas, was convicted of supplying drugs to Nigerian sprinter Blessing Okagbare before the Tokyo Olympics.

But it was the subpoena issued earlier this year to the CEO of swimming’s governing body, Brent Nowicki, to testify as part of the criminal investigation into the case involving the 23 Chinese swimmers that has rattled the Olympic movement. At an annual meeting this week where it was decided to award Salt Lake City the Winter Games, IOC officials took turns pummeling the United States over the Rodchenkov Act and broader US efforts to work outside the recognised anti-doping system.

Their unease was met with sympathy from backers of the Salt Lake City bid at the meeting, including Gov. Spencer Cox of Utah Cox said it was the subpoena to Nowicki that had worried many officials about the possibility of traveling to the United States without facing legal issues. WADA has moved a meeting it was scheduled to hold in the United States later this year, fearing that investigators could seize the electronics of agency officials and try to question them.

The United States — through Congress — accounts for a substantial portion of WADA’s budget. In response to the IOC’s announcement on Wednesday that the Salt Lake City bid came with a major condition, bipartisan anger emerged on Capitol Hill and from Tygart raising questions about whether WADA could ensure a level playing field in Paris.