U.S. HOLDS WADA PAYMENTS OVER REFORMS

img

The United States has withheld its 2024 dues to the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA), the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP) communicated on Wednesday, January 8.

The deci­sion empha­sizes U.S. demands for sig­nif­i­cant reforms to the glob­al anti-dop­ing watch­dog, as Reuters reports. The move fol­lows a dis­pute between the U.S. and WADA regard­ing the han­dling of dop­ing cas­es involv­ing 23 Chi­nese swim­mers. These ath­letes report­ed­ly failed drug tests short­ly before the Tokyo Olympics in 2021 but were still allowed to com­pete. The ONDCP stat­ed it has “not yet decid­ed whether to pay dues to WADA,” which are due by Dec. 31.

“ONDCP is eval­u­at­ing all our options as we con­tin­ue to push WADA to adopt com­mon­sense reforms to restore trust in the world anti­dop­ing sys­tem and pro­vide ath­letes the full con­fi­dence they deserve,” said ONDCP Direc­tor Rahul Gup­ta. He empha­sized the need for “con­crete actions” to rebuild con­fi­dence in anti-dop­ing efforts.

Gup­ta, who has been serv­ing on WADA’s 16-mem­ber Exec­u­tive Com­mit­tee since April 2023, risks los­ing his seat if the U.S. does not pay its $3.625 mil­lion annu­al dues. Accord­ing to WADA rules, exec­u­tive com­mit­tee mem­bers rep­re­sent­ing coun­tries with unpaid con­tri­bu­tions are auto­mat­i­cal­ly removed from their posi­tions.

WADA’s 2025 oper­at­ing bud­get is set at $57.5 mil­lion. While the agency declined to com­ment on the ONDCP state­ment, a spokesper­son reit­er­at­ed that an inde­pen­dent inves­ti­ga­tor cleared WADA of mis­han­dling the Chi­nese swim­mers’ cas­es, with find­ings reit­er­at­ed as recent­ly as Sep­tem­ber 2023.

The U.S. Anti-Dop­ing Agency (USADA) applaud­ed the ONDCP’s deci­sion, describ­ing it as “the only right choice.”

“The cur­rent WADA lead­ers left the U.S. with no oth­er option after fail­ing to deliv­er on sev­er­al very rea­son­able requests, such as an inde­pen­dent audit of WADA’s oper­a­tions, to achieve the trans­paren­cy and account­abil­i­ty need­ed to ensure WADA is fit for pur­pose to pro­tect ath­letes,” said USADA CEO Travis Tygart in a state­ment.