If you’ve ever wondered what special training allows Jamaica’s Usain Bolt to tap into the Speed Force and gives their bobsled team the heart to get up and finish when all seems lost, you’re not alone. The World Anti-Doping Agency — the same NARC task force that investigated and subsequently destroyed Lance Armstrong — is “launching an ‘extraordinary’ audit of Jamaica’s drug-testing agency” after Jamaica pulled an Iraq-WMD-style “we aren’t doing anything wrong but, heh, we can’t let you hang out and fact check us” stunt heading into the London Olympics, reports the AP.
In simpler terms, you’re about to hear a lot of “dope” jokes about Jamaica.
WADA’s probe follows data the former executive director of the Jamaica Anti-Doping Commission revealed to the Caribbean’s oldest newspaper indicating a near complete breakdown in JADCO’s out-of-competition testing from January 2012 to the July opening of the Olympics.
In an interview with The Associated Press, JADCO chairman Herbert Elliott dismissed Renee Anne Shirley’s figures as lies and described her as “a bit demented” and “a Judas.” But the World Anti-Doping Agency tells a different story: WADA confirmed to the AP that there was, as Shirley asserted, “a significant gap of no testing” by JADCO as athletes trained in the months ahead of the Games — and that it is concerned enough to investigate.
If we know anything about WADA, Jamaica should just throw up their hands and fork over whatever giant reserves of PEDs they’ve been pumping into their athletes a la Ivan Drago. Give it up now and save us a decade of WADA finding nothing, then going back to re-investigate, then going back to re-investigate, then going back to re-investigate. Just come out and say, “we gave Usain Bolt robot legs, sorry” and be done with it.
The real question: Does Sheryl Crow have a reggae album coming out? Is that why this is happening?
You can read more about the audit here, but be warned, it makes WADA sound even more like the agents from The Matrix than I did.
