With the news of Marvin Bracy serving a quiet ban the last few years, my attention was brought to some news I missed because it came out during the Paris Olympics.
WADA & USADA agree that there was a US athlete "who competed at Olympic qualifier and international events in the United States, admitted to taking steroids and EPO yet was permitted to continue competing all the way up to retirement"
We don't know this is a track athlete and apparently they were allowed to retire without a suspension because publication of a suspension would threaten their safety. This really doesn't make sense to me because if the athlete is cooperating at some point the cooperation should lead to some consequences against another entity so that other entity will eventually find out and the suspension can be announced. What am I missing? Now we have no evidence this is even a track athlete.
Full details here:
WADA press release linked below wrote:
In one case, an elite level athlete, who competed at Olympic qualifier and international events in the United States, admitted to taking steroids and EPO yet was permitted to continue competing all the way up to retirement. Their case was never published, results never disqualified, prize money never returned, and no suspension ever served. The athlete was allowed to line up against their unknowing competitors as if they had never cheated. In that case, when USADA eventually admitted to WADA what had been going on, it advised that any publication of consequences or disqualification of results would put the athlete’s security at risk and asked WADA to agree to non-publication. Being put in this impossible position, WADA had no choice but to agree (after verifying with its Intelligence and Investigations Department that the security threat was credible). The athlete’s doping was therefore never made public.