JADCO fires back at Conte and associates !

[Sir X]

LETTER OF THE DAY - Anti-Doping Agency On The Mark
Published: Wednesday | August 7, 2013 0 Comments
Dr Elliott
Dr Elliott
I WRITE IN response to an article published in your paper on Thursday, August 1, 2013 entitled 'JADCO did 106 tests in 2012 - Dr Elliott says agency did enough given population size'.

Given the local and, in fact, global interest that has been paid to the statistics quoted in this article, I think that it is important to set the record straight as to the total number of tests actually conducted by the Jamaica Anti-Doping Commission (JADCO) in calendar year 2012, which is the common period used when comparing anti-doping tests statistics by WADA, International Federations like the IAAF, and national anti-doping organisations like JADCO.

I state, without fear of contradiction that, for calendar year 2012, JADCO conducted a total of 179 tests - with 108 tests conducted in-competition and 71 tests conducted out-of-competition. This total includes 25 in-competition tests which were conducted by JADCO at the request of an international federation.

Therefore, for its own account, JADCO conducted and paid for 154 tests in calendar year 2012, with 83 tests in-competition and 71 tests out-of-competition across nine sports. These tests were all paid for using funds provided to JADCO through the Government's Estimates of Expenditure for FY 2011-2012 and 2012-2013, respectively, and can be verified by the financial and testing records of the commission.

This level of testing indicates that approximately 51 per cent more tests were carried out by JADCO in 2012 than have been reported by the JADCO chairman and which were also stated in the WADA 2012 Anti-Doping Testing Figures Report. The number of tests referred to in your article of August 1, 2013 by WADA and apparently confirmed by Dr Herb Elliott do not seem to correspond with the tests conducted by JADCO doping control teams for the 12-month calendar period, sent to the Montreal Lab for analysis, and paid for out of the coffers of the commission in 2012.

The WADA report states that for 2012, JADCO conducted 106 tests as the testing authority in nine sports, broken down as follows - see table at left. (NOTE: All tests conducted by JADCO in 2012 were urine tests - in essence the commission did not perform any blood testing).

I contend that JADCO authorised and paid for more tests on Jamaican athletes, particularly in track and field, than have been reported and published in the WADA statistics in 2012, primarily due to a reporting error that has not been corrected in the ADAMS database that was made before I arrived at JADCO in mid-July, 2012.

I further state that these official figures do not show the true picture of the work carried out by the Jamaica Anti-Doping Commission as testing authority on behalf of the Government and taxpayers of Jamaica.

I would challenge the chairman and the board of JADCO to refute my statement. And I suggest, respectfully, that the record needs to be amended by the board of JADCO forthwith to reflect the true level of testing carried out by the commission in 2012.

Finally, on the question of the vexing issue of whether or not JADCO actively conducted testing in the "off-season" (i.e. the October-January period), I can further verify that during the period August-December 2012, in keeping with international best practice to place greater emphasis on out-of-competition testing in the off-season, JADCO conducted a total of 72 tests - with 12 tests conducted in-competition and 60 tests out-of-competition. And this level of testing continued into the first quarter of 2013.

It can, therefore, be seen, sir, that even though the tests actually conducted by JADCO in 2012 were not as much as the agency or the Government would have/might have wished for, I suggest that the facts, when thoroughly researched, will support my position that in terms of tests authorised and paid for by the Jamaica Anti-Doping Commission as the testing authority in calendar year 2012, the picture is somewhat better than what has previously been reported.

R. ANNE SHIRLEY,

Former Executive Director,

JADCO

renee.shirley@yahoo.com

[Assasin]

a water gun them a use to fire back??? LOL

[Islandman]

Worse than that, aiming at themselves. She is more concerned with the present JADCO chairman than Conte, sounds like internal politics.

Nothing about what the number of tests represents relative to the number of active athletes?

[Assasin]

you see Harlem nights. There is a scene with Arsenio Hall firing back. It look more like it. LOL.

[Historian]

Exactly!!

Worse than that, aiming at themselves. She is more concerned with the present JADCO chairman than Conte, sounds like internal politics.

Nothing about what the number of tests represents relative to the number of active athletes?

I am agreeing with your points above. Here is today’s Daily Gleaner editorial. And I share the views of the Gleaner on this one.

EDITORIAL - Get With The Programme, JADCO
Published: Wednesday | August 7, 2013

THIS NEWSPAPER hates that it finds itself in common cause with the likes of Victor Conte, who peddled banned substances to athletes and now profits from his notoriety.

But as uncomfortable as it is to concede, Conte, who was at the centre of the BALCO scandal, is right about the absence of transparency by the Jamaica Anti-Doping Commission (JADCO). And that, as this newspaper has long maintained, hurts Jamaica's reputation as a global athletic power.

JADCO's approach to providing information about its testing programme gives ammunition to people like Conte and Dick Pound, the former head of the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA), who want to believe that Jamaica's production of so many world-class track athletes is the result of cheating.

Indeed, the recent spate of positive drug tests against Jamaican athletes provided a new soapbox for the critics.

First, though, it bears repeating that Jamaica's top-class performances in world athletics is not a new phenomenon. More than 60 years ago, at the 1948 London Olympics, Arthur Wint and Herb McKenley were the stars of the sprints and middle-distance races.

Before the Bolts, Blakes, Campbell-Browns and Fraser-Pryces there were the Laings and the Quarries and then Otteys, Cuthberts and others.

The success of these several generations of athletes has its foundation in high-school athletics championships, of an intensity and competitiveness that is perhaps unrivalled anywhere in the world. A society of appropriate infrastructure has evolved over generations to support this programme.

None of the foregoing is to suggest that Jamaican athletes do not cheat and that we should not operate a system based on individual restraint.

While we do not believe that hardcore doping is a feature of Jamaican athletics, it is our view, though, that a robust and transparent programme of testing is not only a deterrent to drug cheating, but the best answer to the Contes and Pounds who may want to believe the worst.

Not Been Sufficiently Transparent

This is where we find congruence with Conte, who was jailed for distributing steroids and money laundering: JADCO has not been sufficiently transparent about its testing programme.

It was only last week, after our too-many appeals in these columns, and in the face of unfortunate global questioning of the legitimacy of our athletes, that JADCO's chairman, Dr Herb Elliott, caused it to dribble that the agency performed 106 tests in 2012, 68 of which were in competition. In the five years of its existence, JADCO conducted 860 tests - 504 in competition and 356 out of competition.

JADCO has not said, however, how many athletes were tested. Neither has JADCO provided a robust comparison of its testing programme against countries of a similar number of athletes. Nor has it said how many athletes missed drug tests. In any event, JADCO could put the suspicions beyond doubt by providing data on its testing of our elite track athletes, who would be identified as such.

The data we call for should be easy to collate and, in the context of today's ideal of transparent governance, should be easily accessible.

JADCO's failure to do this, we firmly believe, is not because it has anything to hide. Rather, it is subject, we believe, to an old-fashion leadership culture that is uncomfortable with transparency, hamstrung by a fear of criticism, and views the control of information as power.

The opinions on this page, except for the above, do not necessarily reflect the views of The Gleaner. To respond to a Gleaner editorial, email us: editor@gleanerjm.com or fax: 922-6223. Responses should be no longer than 400 words. Not all responses will be published.

http://jamaica-gleaner.com/gleaner/2...cleisure1.html