‘We support Peter’: Bol’s Olympic place secure despite revelations in anti-doping hearing
Peter Bol’s place in the Australian athletics team for Paris 2024 is secure, according to the head of Athletics Australia, and unaffected by revelations in an anti-doping court last week, including that he was found to have had a screenshot of doping information on his phone.
Athletics Australia chief executive Peter Bromley said that because Bol had been exonerated by Sport Integrity Australia regarding his failed drug test in October 2022 for the banned performance-enhancing substance EPO (erythropoietin), he was clear to compete at the upcoming Olympics regardless of the doubts cast on him by World Anti-Doping Agency scientists in a recent Court of Arbitration for Sport hearing for another athlete.
Peter Bol’s position in the Australian team for Paris 2024 will not be affected by the revelations.Credit: Getty Images
That hearing, for Croatian soccer player Mario Vuskovic, who is fighting an EPO charge, heard that Bol was found to have had a screenshot on his phone with information from a former distributor of performance-enhancing drugs, Victor Conte, about how to micro-dose EPO and how to evade drug testers.
In the hearing, WADA scientists rejected the idea Bol had recorded a false positive with his first positive drug test, and that the only reason the B sample and the retested A sample were not positive results was because of degradation of the urine sample.
Bromley reaffirmed Bol’s place in the team for Paris on Saturday. Middle-distance runner Bol, 30, is a medal hope for Australia in the 800 metres, in which he finished fourth at the Tokyo Olympics in 2021, in a performance that captivated the nation.
“The accusations against Peter Bol and all the supporting expertise around it showed that testing for EPO is an imperfect system and one that needs much work,” Bromley said.
“Sport Integrity Australia concluded their investigations on Peter last year and exonerated him. From our perspective, this case is closed, and we support Peter and his ongoing preparations for the Paris Olympics.”
The Australian Olympic Committee declined to comment on Saturday.
On Friday, this masthead revealed the Bol revelations made in the Vuskovic case, in which Bol’s lawyer, Paul Greene, said the screenshot on Bol’s phone was immaterial and that WADA scientists had refused to accept they had made a bad mistake in Bol’s case.
“The position they took in the hearing was ‘Peter was actually guilty, but we just didn’t catch him’. It was a truly astounding position, but telling that WADA lives in a fishbowl,” Greene argued in the Court of Arbitration for Sport.
WADA challenged the assertion that Bol had recorded a “false positive” in his first failed drug test and said his case had only been dropped due to the time that elapsed between tests which caused degradation of the urine samples.
WADA still appears to believe the Australian 800m runner has questions to answer, while Bol’s supporters say the authority can’t accept it was wrong and is trying to save face after its bungled investigation.
Bol was provisionally suspended in January last year after testing positive to EPO, and has always maintained his innocence.
Months later, his second urine sample, the B sample, did not return a positive result for EPO and a retesting of his A sample also was not positive for the hormone. Bol’s provisional suspension was lifted after seven months and the case against him dropped by Sport Integrity Australia.
Peter Bol wins his semi in the 800m at the Tokyo Olympics in 2021.Credit: AP
WADA changed its testing practices for EPO following a review sparked by the Bol case, which the Athletics Integrity Unit chairman David Howman had described as “a disaster”.
“The Bol case, we had a very low recombinant EPO signal in the A sample which was weakened in the B sample confirmed three months later. This time issue is important when you are looking at samples with such low concentration of recombinant EPO, as in the Bol case, because you can have degradation over time,” WADA scientist Yvette Dehnes told the Vuskovic hearing.
Another WADA scientist, Dr Sven Voss, said: “It was not only time, it was the freeze and thaw cycle in between (testing) which could have affected the concentration.”
Greene said that Bol’s case illustrated WADA had made mistakes in EPO testing, and the runner had agreed to let details of his case be used by Greene in representing Vuskovic at the Court of Arbitration for Sport.
“WADA clearly will never admit it made a mistake even when the mistake is obvious to the whole world – like Peter Bol’s false positive. They are taking a position which has no credibility and no support,” Greene said.
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