Independent testing confirms Peter Bol never took synthetic EPO
New independent testing has revealed the “catastrophic blunder” that wrongly found champion runner Peter Bol was doping.
Independent testing has revealed Peter Bol never used the banned substance that saw the middle distance star provisionally banned last year, rocking the athletics world.
Bol, who was nominated for Australian of the Year after becoming the first Australian runner in 53 years to make it into an Olympic 800m final, was provisionally banned after returning a positive result to EPO back in October, 2022, when tested out of competition.
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EPO in its synthetic form has been banned as a performance-enhancing drug since the early 1990s, and was infamously used by Lance Armstrong as part of a sophisticated doping program through the late 1990s and early 2000s, during which he won seven consecutive Tour de France titles.
It is also naturally produced by the kidneys, but in its artificial form helps with performance and recovery by increasing red-blood-cell count.
The 28-year-old has always maintained his innocence, and the Sydney Morning Herald reported that independent testing commissioned by his legal team found no “presence of any synthetic EPO”.
Bol’s legal team, headed by Portland-based sports lawyer Paul Greene, sent a letter to Sports Integrity Australia last week that claimed “inexperience and incompetence at the Australian Sports Drug Testing Laboratory (ASDTL) led to an incorrect determination” of Bol’s initial positive A-sample.
A positive initial sample, known as an A Sample, provisionally suspends competitors until a second confirmation sample is used, known as a B Sample.
In a statement in February, Bol confirmed that his B Sample “did not confirm my A Sample”.
Bol said the further independent testing confirmed his innocence.
“I wasn’t guilty, waiting for a miracle – I was innocent and waiting for it to be proved,” he said.
“I knew it would come. The people who analysed it had no idea who I was, and it shows in detail how [ASDTL] messed up. I want them to acknowledge that.
“I don’t want to fight, but I don’t want to go quietly either. We want to improve the whole sport. You can’t have innocent athletes getting done for something they’ve never used.”
The letter from Bol’s legal team says: “Sport Integrity Australia has an affirmative duty to publicly acknowledge the catastrophic blunders that have been made in Mr Bol’s case and immediately exonerate him since the rules mandate that anti-doping authorities like Sport Integrity Australia be held to the same strict standards as athletes”.
The gel test used by the ASDTL to measure for EPO is different to the isoelectric focusing method (IEF) used by WADA for Bol’s B-sample, but was used in determining his A-sample result.
The ASDTL is an independent lab, used by Sport Integrity Australia.
The letter cited two reports that were critical of the findings made by Sport Integrity Australia, and laid out seven failures of process that resulted in Bol’s October A-sample, calling it a “blunder of epic proportions”.
- Bol’s sample was overloaded, which led to an incorrect interpretation of the gel patterns.
- The lab failed to understand that Bol’s symmetric band indicated the presence of uEPO (natural EPO) only and not a mixed band that contained both natural EPO and synthetic EPO.
- The lab incorrectly overlooked the very strong uEPO intensity in Bol’s sample which indicated no rEPO (synthetic EPO) use.
- The lab used poor quality reference material which contributed to the false positive reading for rEPO.
- The lab wrongly concluded that the band apex line ERA in the sample coincided with the corresponding apex line in the Epoetin08 reference preparation.
- The re-run of the sample was wrongly interpreted since the data indicated strongly that there was no rEPO in the sample.
- The lab’s failure to use the IEF method was a lost chance to confirm the absence of rEPO in the sample.
In an interview on Channel Nine’s Today on Wednesday morning, Bol was steadfast in his innocence.
“I feel really good, but at the same time it wasn’t something I was surprised about,” he said.
“It kind of vindicates everything we said all along.
“The fact is I don’t think this should have happened at all, to start with”
Asked about how it felt to have his name dragged through the mud after the positive A-sample was leaked, Bol described it was a “rollercoaster”.
“It was basically a rollercoaster, but I had so much support,” he said.
“It’s still supposedly an ongoing investigation, which I think is completely unfair.
“This month I’m supposed to have an interview with Sport Integrity (Australia) and I still haven’t heard yet and the month is about to be over.
“We’ve lost so much time, time on the track, time off the track, and having to explain something you knew nothing about, has been the most difficult part.
“I remember when I had to explain it to my family, and I was just kind of confused, and to see how upset they were, was just really unnecessary when that B Sample shouldn’t have been made public anyway.
“My coach didn’t sleep for a few days.
“I don’t think (my sister) went to school for the first week (after the news broke).
“It’s something she had nothing to do with, and she was struggling with it. I don’t think a single Australian track athlete has been done for EPO – to accuse me of that, and give me no proof, was just unfair.”
Greene was resolute in his desire for a public apology from Sport Integrity Australia, joining Bol in the interview.
“My primary goal right now is to get them to publicly admit what is obvious,” he said.
“If anyone looks at those reports, we have two of the most world-class analytical chemists in the world look at his results and say this wasn’t even a close call.
“These were just negative tests.
“These WADA labs are generalist, they don’t have the expertise to understand this particular test, the EPO gel test.
“It’s not a straightforward analysis, it isn’t like a normal exam or test or looking at a urine substance where it is clearly in there and it’s synthetic.
“This is a subjective analysis and they just couldn’t get it right.
“They had no idea what they were doing. And the worst part of it now is, one, it was announced first of all, which never should have been. I begged them not to announce it.
“Two, now they just obviously are wrong, they are refusing to drop this sham investigation. They have absolutely no evidence at all at this point as to any wrongdoing.
“People cannot be convicted under the World Anti-Doping Code system or any system on shadows or whispers, they have to have actual evidence, and there is none.
“They haven’t even responded to us at all, we asked them six weeks ago for dates for an interview.
“There’s absolutely no investigation going on, there’s nothing to investigate, and at this point they have a duty to come out and say ‘there’s nothing here.’
“They have the same strict liability standards as athletes do.”
“There’s no urine sample positive, there’s no evidence he took something in his urine, it’s 100% negative, there’s nothing on his phone, there’s nothing on his computer, there’s absolutely no evidence.
“They just need to say they messed this up, this was a mistake, we’re sorry.”
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