Champion athlete Peter Bol hung out to dry by sports administrators

The cruel and questionable farce surrounding the initial provisional suspension of our middle-distance runner Peter Bol and his subsequent seven months in purgatory for a crime he did not commit surely shatters confidence in Australian officialdom’s anti-doping processes.

Athletics Australia and Sport Integrity Australia fiddled around behind closed doors while Bol was left to wear the mantle of an alleged drug cheat until last Tuesday, when the federal government’s anti-doping body suddenly issued a statement announcing it was abandoning its investigation into whether the 29-year-old champion athlete had used the banned synthetic substance EPO.

In January, Bol had been informed by SIA he had failed an out-of-competition drug test by World Anti-Doping Agency-accredited laboratories for the hormone in an A sample test. He was provisionally suspended, as mandated, by Athletics Australia pending the results of a second sample, a process supposed to be both private and in-house. Yet, his positive test result was mysteriously leaked to the media days before the Australia Day ceremonies. Coincidentally perhaps, he had been considered front-runner to be named Young Australian of the Year for his achievements at the Tokyo Olympics and Commonwealth Games in Birmingham.

In February, Bol’s provisional suspension was lifted following an atypical finding in his B sample. However, the athlete subsequently revealed that two independent laboratories had cleared him of using synthetic EPO. Further, he claimed “inexperience and incompetence at the Australian Sports Drug Testing Laboratory led to an incorrect determination”. The SIA ramped up its investigation, demanding his laptop, phone and access to his emails and texts, bank and credit card statements for the past five years and re-interviewing everyone in Bol’s camp.

The SIA was supposed to be a tougher version of its predecessor, the Australian Sports Anti-Doping Authority, but its anodyne “update on the Peter Bol matter” last Tuesday proved curiously self-justifying, suggesting there was nothing to see here: “Sport Integrity Australia acknowledges the significant public interest in this outcome. However, Sport Integrity Australia is required to comply with its obligations under the World Anti-Doping Code and its International Standards, and our legislative requirements, and cannot make any further comment in relation to the matter.”

For its part, Athletics Australia acknowledged Bol had been trapped in a damaging no-man’s land but said its hands were tied due to strict protocols: “This case raises very serious questions about the accuracy and consistency of EPO analysis.”

The World Anti-Doping Agency is reviewing current EPO processes. The federal Minister for Sport, Anika Wells, is on the agency’s executive committee, but Bol’s scandalous treatment has exposed a situation in Australia requiring more than a scientific fix.