By Ben Rumsby
Wada director general David Howman urged the island’s government to investigate claims by the former executive director of the Jamaica Anti-Doping Commission that its drugs-testing programme was completely inadequate.
Renee Anne Shirley accused Jamaica’s politicians and administrators of ignoring her warnings that the positive tests returned by Asafa Powell and four other athletes were a “disaster” waiting to happen, saying: “They believe Jamaica does not have a problem.”
Howman warned that if the country refused to take its responsibilities seriously, Wada could deem Jadco non-compliant with the Wada code, which could have dire consequences for the country’s elite athletes, including world record-breaking sprinter Usain Bolt.
“Our normal approach if we have issues falling into the category of either complaint or concern is to try to work with the particular signatory – in this case the Nada [national anti-doping agency] – and remedy it,” Howman said. “If nothing happens, we can ask our board to declare any of the signatories non-compliant and that has implications as to whether teams from the country would be admitted into various events.
“We report the non-compliance to people who can then consider whether other sanctions ought to follow.
That would be the IOC [International Olympic Committee] and IAAF [International Association of Athletics Federations] and so on.”