Sports politics: No millions from the White House? A disgrace for organized sport

The explosive news had not yet made it to the White House news channels as of Thursday afternoon. There, US President Joe Biden’s press staff preferred to praise the fire brigades that are currently fighting the forest fires in California. However, officials from the sports world had long since confirmed the explosive news: The White House is withholding its annual contribution to the World Anti-Doping Agency (Wada) until further notice, around 3.5 million euros – at best a blob in the national budget. What does it say when the country that has so far paid the most money to Wada of all governments no longer even wants to hand over its change? And instead venture into a power struggle in which federal authorities have long been involved?

You have to be careful with so-called escalation levels when they come from sport and you ignore the news from real life. The feud, which is now even occupying the White House, is astonishing even by sports-political standards. If you like, it has been building up since the turn of the millennium, when organized sport founded Wada. To date, however, the global supervisory authority has not shed the reputation that it can or only wants to show so much of the pharmaceutical problem in sport so that the business of top performance does not suffer (the small amount of almost 58 million euros in the annual budget for the global anti-doping fight Of course, it only helps to a limited extent).

The USA and its national anti-doping authority (Usada) like to see themselves as a counterweight, as the only reputable intelligence unit. That’s certainly putting it on too thick, but last but not least, there’s been this federal law that has been making sport tremble for five years: the “Rodtchenkov Act”, named after the key witness in Russian state doping. As soon as an affair worldwide affects the USA, for example American athletes have been disadvantaged by doping athletes, US authorities can investigate themselves. So almost always.

The IOC recently threatened to withdraw the 2034 Winter Games from the Americans – that is unlikely to happen

The Pole Witold Banka, president of WADA, is not even wrong when he complains that the Americans are forcing their way of combating doping on the rest of the world. But the way WADA has done this recently is inappropriately described in a friendly way. To this day, Wada defends the Chinese authorities’ version that 23 Chinese swimmers must have taken heart medication collectively through hotel food before the 2021 Olympics – although even Wada experts internally doubted this. When Usada accused Wada of covering up the cases (which Wada is taking legal action against), articles suddenly appeared accusing Usada of wrongdoing. For example, they had used an athlete who tested positive as an informant – although, according to Usada, with the approval of Wada.

When the International Olympic Committee (IOC) awarded the 2034 Winter Games to Salt Lake City last summer, it essentially decreed: If the Americans don’t leave Wada alone, the IOC can take these Winter Games away from Salt Lake City again. The IOC can hardly remain inactive when the US government is now withholding millions because it officially considers WADA incapable of doing its work.

Despite everything, it remains difficult to imagine that the worst will happen. First of all, the IOC can consider itself lucky if, in times of increasingly shorter winters, it can still find hosts for the Winter Games. The Americans also maintain one of the IOC’s most important lifelines: the TV contract with the broadcaster NBC, which guarantees $7.65 billion alone until 2032. Without this money, the recipients, many world associations and national Olympic committees, would not even exist. One way to read the Americans’ latest move is that they don’t consider organized sport and its control bodies to be incompetent – but also weak and dependent. For the time being, those for whom the 3.5 million missing in the anti-doping fight still make a big difference are being pinched: clean athletes.