The report uncovered that the International Olympic Committee and the World Anti-Doping Agency failed to follow their regular protocols after finding the banned steroid clenbuterol in several samples provided by Jamaican athletes, including “the Caribbean island’s male sprinters,” who competed in the 2008 Olympics in Beijing.

The report also included an interview with a well-known drug dealer known for supplying doping agents to athletes in the Caribbean during that time period, who said he “100 percent” believed some members of the Jamaican team knowingly took the substance for performance-enhancing purposes.

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“There were plenty of questions from Jamaican coaches asking me [ …] if clenbuterol was good for sprinting,” Angel Herdedia told ARD. “They have asked me since very long, even years before that, they asked me how clenbuterol was good for sprinters and they were asking me questions how to use it. And whether it was good for sprinting, for recovering and all this stuff. Basically clenbuterol, [ …] they used it a lot for recovery, for increasing their oxygen intake, you know, for anti-asthmatic properties.”

The Jamaica Olympic Association didn’t address Herdedia’s comments specifically, but instead spoke more generally, noting the report was filled with “wild speculations,” which it called “totally unfair and unjust to our athletes.”

“Furthermore,” Fennell continued, “we have not received any communication from the IOC or WADA advising us of such findings.”

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The ARD report, however, said IOC and WADA both confirmed the substance was found in a recent reanalysis of samples from the time period undertaken last year in response to the Russian doping scandal. Without specifically naming Jamaica, the IOC noted, “a number of cases of athletes from a number of countries and from a number of different sports” had tested positive for “very low levels of clenbuterol.”

The IOC, however, justified not following normal protocol and further examining the failed tests by claiming the athletes in question were innocent, and that their samples became tainted through routine consumption of “contaminated meat.” Clenbuterol was often administered to animals in China as a fattening additive in 2008, ARD reports.

WADA, meanwhile, told ARD it also was “aware” of the failed tests, but decided to follow the IOC’s course to ignore its usual protocol after IOC chalked up the failed tests to the athletes having consumed it via food.

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“Of course this is not great,” WADA Director General Olivier Niggli told ARD. “Because if you’re cheating, if you are a cheater, you have a perfect excuse if you get caught. But that’s where we are.”

The ARD report zeroed in on Jamaican athletes, specifically, giving two reasons that cast doubt on the IOC’s explanation that the athletes in question ended up with the substance in their samples through food.

Along with tracking down the known doping-agent dealer, ARD reports Jamaica imported most of its own food to a training camp ahead of the Olympics in Tianjian, China, in 2008, meaning the athletes would not have eaten contaminated Chinese meat.

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“For the record, we wish to advise that whilst some small quantities of canned Jamaican foods were sent to the camp, the vast majority of the meats, fruits and vegetables consumed at the camp were purchased in China and prepared by cooks employed to the hotel in Tianjin,” Fennell said. “We continue to support and promote aggressively the fight against doping in sport, but we also reject unjustified attacks on our athletes.”

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ARD reporters, meanwhile, remain perplexed why the IOC and WADA did not follow their own protocol and instead accepted the excuse of the athletes having consumed contaminated meat given a similar instance that occurred at the games in 2008.

Polish canoeist Adam Seroczynski, who tested positive for the steroid shortly after competing in the 2008 games, tried escape punishment by chalking up his result to having eaten contaminated meat. Seroczynski was eventually banned for two years.

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While it does not appear the IOC or WADA plans to pursue ARD’s claims further, if it did the ramifications could be devastating for the Jamaican team, and its sprinters in particular, who took home 11 medals in the track and field competition.