The British Cycling Federation, with the help of the British Anti-Doping Agency (UKAD), carried out doping controls on riders at a private laboratory, in violation of international rules, the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) announced on Tuesday. ), without calling for sanctions.
Called "Operation Echo", the investigation began in March following the publication of press articles, advancing reprehensible acts committed by people within the two bodies, dating back to February 2011. It "
made it possible to confirm that British Cycling, as part of a study on the potential contamination of dietary supplements, had taken samples from elite runners and analyzed them for nandrolone, an androgenic and anabolic steroid,
”said WADA.
“
Contrary to the rules established by the World Anti-Doping Code, these samples were taken by staff of the British Cycling Federation, rather than by doping control officers, analyzed by a laboratory not accredited by WADA, and provided by athletes with the assurance that the British Anti-Doping Agency would never know the results
”, continues the instance.
The investigation also revealed that "
at least one UKAD employee was aware of the existence of these controls and that the samples were likely to be taken and analyzed in a laboratory not accredited by WADA.
", Added the authority, specifying that"
no proof of reception of the results of analysis and no e-mail proving that the principal events were known in real time were not found by the UKAD
".
A copy of the findings of this investigation has been provided to WADA's Compliance, Rules and Standards Department for review, as well as to the International Cycling Union (UCI). The world doping policeman also did not recommend a sanction, considering that "
the people involved in the events of 2011 were no longer employed by the UKAD, which had already put in place measures intended to prevent a repetition of such events
”. Finally, insisting on the full cooperation and transparency of the two British bodies for its investigation, WADA also said that it had found no evidence of allegations made earlier this year that theUKAD had communicated individual biological passport data to the Cycling Federation in 2016.
