Tennis player Yanina Wickmayer has been suspended for a one year by the World Anti-Doping Agency. It wasn't a failed drug test, but failures to show up to possibly fail a drug test. Meaning, she missed doping tests while traveling. And if you read the article on ESPN, you realize that WADA is basically Glen Close from Fatal Attraction. They want to know everything all the time.
Under WADA's "whereabouts" rule, elite athletes must make themselves available for out-of-competition testing for one hour a day, 365 days a year. They must give three months' notice of where and when they will be available so they can be tested.
Wickmayer, who made the semifinals at this year's U.S. Open, is number 16 in the world. The 20-year-old is mum on whether she will appeal the ruling.
Her claim is that she was never informed about the testing and that she had been traveling with her father for months at a time, so correspondence by WADA -- a company that apparently still uses Certified Mail -- was never received. Wickmayer said in a press conference that they never attempted to track her down via email or by phone. You'd think that a company that uses the internet to house a database and information on everything from banned substances to athlete's test results, the internet would be a very reasonable and cost effective alternative to Certified Mail. Never mind the fact that's 2009, and you can send read receipts on emails you get on your cell phone.
Regardless of the claim, in this day and age, an athlete can't afford to have their name implicated with doping. Wickmayer is 20 years old and made barely $1 million before the suspension. Now that her name is tied to doping, her career is tainted.
WADA to me is like PETA. A company that hides behind an altruistic mission, but is really a business model with a very defined niche.
I am going to assume for a minute that Wickmayer is telling the truth. Would Venus or Serena be held to the same standard? How about Maria Sharapova? Would Cannon or Nike let one of its most recognizable female faces be implicated in something tno bigger than a scheduling conflict? Or, are they trying to shed some positive light on themselves after Andre Agassi's public acknowledgment of his failed drug test that remained out of the public when it happened? The timing is curious.
Even if the Agassi incident has any relevance to this situation, Wickmayer's suspension seems to defy the very existence of the WADA Code and why it exists. On its website, WADA writes that the code:
… is intended to be specific enough to achieve complete harmonization on issues where uniformity is required, yet general enough in other areas to permit flexibility on how agreed-upon anti-doping principles are implemented.
By offering such a blanket statement, you’d think they could open up Wickmayer's case and find out if her absence was negligent or intentional to mask PEDs. Each case is different. And, if you are going to expect athlete's with far more busy lives than the employees at WADA to bend over backwards to protect the integrity of sports, then WADA should just pick up the telephone.
It's really that easy.
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