Screenshot found on Peter Bol’s phone contained doping information

Olympic medal hopeful Peter Bol has once more had his integrity dramatically challenged by the world anti-doping body amid the airing of previously secret evidence uncovered on the runner’s phone, sparking furious accusations the anti-doping body had “disgracefully smeared” the Australian champion.

A hearing before an international tribunal has heard how anti-doping officials from Australia, who seized Bol’s phone and computer during the investigation into a positive drug test, had found a screenshot on the phone with information from a former distributor of performance-enhancing drugs, Victor Conte, about how to micro-dose EPO and how to evade drug testers.

Peter Bol’s case has been raised in an anti-doping hearing involving another athlete.Credit: Scott McNaughton

But Bol’s lawyer, Paul Greene, has labelled that discovery meaningless and its airing by the World Anti-Doping Authority an appalling attempt to shirk responsibility for falsely accusing his client of doping in allegations which were withdrawn last year, allowing Bol to resume his career and compete for Australia at the upcoming Paris Olympics.

“The position they took in the hearing was ‘Peter was actually guilty, but we just didn’t catch him’. It was a truly astounding position, but telling that WADA lives in a fishbowl,” Greene recently argued in the Court of Arbitration for Sport.

The ongoing skirmish between global anti-doping authorities and Bol occurred during a hearing involving a Croatian soccer player, also represented by Greene, who is also fighting an EPO doping charge. Greene told this masthead the Australian Olympian had “graciously allowed” footballer Mario Vuskovic to use details from Bol’s collapsed doping case to prove his own innocence.

But in a surprise development in the Court of Arbitration for Sport case heard last week, scientists from WADA challenged the assertion that Bol had recorded a “false positive” in his first failed drug test and said his case had only been dropped due to the time that elapsed between tests which caused degradation of the urine samples.

Bol led the pack in the 800m final in Tokyo until the final 100 metres.Credit: Getty Images

The evidence from the scientists and arguments from WADA’s lawyers reveal the deep, unresolved tension between officials from WADA and Bol’s camp.

WADA still appears to believe the Australian 800m runner has questions to answer, while Bol’s supporters say the authority can’t accept it was wrong and is trying to save face after its bungled investigation.

Domestic anti-doping agency, Sport Integrity Australia, has not been accused of wrongdoing by Greene. Bol’s lawyer instead praised its conduct in dropping the case against Bol last year after retesting his original positive drug test, his A sample, and not finding it positive for the presence of EPO.

In a statement, Sport Integrity Australia declined to comment on the developments.

But it was the airing of information from Sport Integrity Australia’s Bol probe during Vuskovic’s appeal against his two-year EPO ban that sparked the claims and counter-claims involving the Australian.

During the Court of Arbitration for Sport hearing, WADA’s lawyer revealed that Sport Integrity Australia investigators had seized Bol’s phone and discovered a screenshot of a letter from sport drug trafficker Conte to British sprinter Dwain Chambers.

The letter discussed micro-dosing EPO and how to avoid drug testers. The hearing was told it was photographed by Bol five weeks before he was drug-tested and returned an initial positive drug test.

WADA scientists insisted in the hearing that Bol’s case did not involve a false positive but that testing results were obscured as a result of the degradation of his urine sample in the three months between testing of his initial A sample, and the testing of his second B sample. His first sample was then also retested eight months after it was initially tested.

The investigation into Bol was conducted by Sport Integrity Australia but it relied on testing carried out by WADA labs.

Greene accused WADA of continuing to defame Bol in the hearing, saying the position it had taken had no credibility or support, and it was incapable of admitting mistakes.

“WADA would never have agreed to a review and to strengthen EPO testing and procedures in light of the Bol outcome if there was degradation of the sample. They are still defaming Mr Bol in this hearing and it’s just a total disgrace,” Greene said.

WADA argued it was Greene who had introduced the issue of Bol’s seized computer and phone being found to be “clean” and it was only responding to an inaccurate assertion.

Bol has qualified for Paris 2024 after narrowly missing the medals in Tokyo.Credit: Getty Images

“There was a screenshot found on Mr Bol’s phone which was an article which included a letter from Victor Conte to [former UK Sprinter] Dwain Chambers discussing micro-dosing with EPO in the off-season and there was also discussion [of] various techniques to game the whereabouts system, putting in inaccurate information, making sure your voicemail was full,” WADA’s general counsel Ross Wenzel said. The whereabouts system requires athletes to report where they can be located for out-of-competition drug testing.

“This is an article about using EPO, how to use it in the off-season and the screenshot was opened on Mr Bol’s phone on the sixth of September 2022, a month and five days before a sample initially categorised as positive was collected on the 11th of October 2022,” Wenzel said.

“When he was interviewed about this and asked about the screenshot which was on his phone – it was not in his search history it was actually something that had been saved on his phone – the answer was, ‘oh, I read a lot of things, I am interested in learning and all that’.

“I make no comment and do not ask the panel to draw any conclusions about whether or not there was endogenous EPO in the [Bol] sample. I only raise that because of what was said in Mr Greene’s closing.”

British sprinter Dwain Chambers was banned for two years after testing positive for an anabolic steroid. Credit: AP

Conte was the founder and CEO of BALCO (Bay Area Laboratory Co-Operative), based in California, who served four months in jail after pleading guilty to conspiracy to distribute steroids.

Chambers is a former world 100 metres bronze medallist who served a two-year ban for using the banned drug THG (Tetrahydrogestrinone, a steroid known as The Clear), which had been supplied to him by Conte.

WADA’s scientists and lawyers said Bol’s case had been dropped because of degradation of the sample, not a false positive.

“The Bol case, we had a very low recombinant EPO signal in the A sample which was weakened in the B sample confirmed three months later. This time issue is important when you are looking at samples with such low concentration of recombinant EPO, as in the Bol case, because you can have degradation over time,” WADA scientist Yvette Dehnes told the hearing.

Another WADA scientist, Dr Sven Voss, added: “It was not only time, it was the freeze and thaw cycle in between (testing) which could have affected the concentration.”

WADA lawyer Ross Wenzel shows a transcript of an interview with Peter Bol about a screenshot from his phone, at a Court of Arbitration for Sport hearing on the case of footballer Mario Vuskovic.Credit: CAS/Vimeo

Dehnes said: “When the A sample was re-analysed eight months later, the signal was too low for detection so the degradation had been completed.”

Greene rejected this and said there was no evidence there was ever any synthetic EPO in Bol’s system.

“WADA clearly will never admit it made a mistake even when the mistake is obvious to the whole world – like Peter Bol’s false positive. They are taking a position which has no credibility and no support,” he said.

Greene said that Vuskovic, like Bol, had provided “effort urine” after a training session and the sample was “overloaded” by scientists and gave an inaccurate return.

“The same thing that caused a false positive in Peter Bol’s case. I am amazed that this joint panel still does not recognise what happened in Peter’s case and that it was a false positive even though SIA [Sport Integrity Australia] did the right thing and reanalysed the sample,” Greene told the court.

“There was no evidence there was EPO in Peter Bol’s sample and the report says as much. It was a negative sample, but somehow they are still saying there was a low amount of EPO. WADA will never admit when it makes a mistake and it will not admit it in the Bol case.”

Greene said former WADA head David Howman had been scathing of the handling of the Bol case.

Howman last year described the case as a disaster for doping authorities.

“The worst thing that could happen is what happened in that [Bol] case,” he said. “What we must do is to ensure that the process can be reviewed and reconducted in a way that doesn’t end up in such a disaster. It’s not fair on the athlete.”

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