Those who follow my blog have certainly noticed that I do not particularly like Coleman. He has something that upsets me. And what happened last year was the last straw.
Last year, the USADA (yes, those are the very same gentlemen who find that WA is not punishing Russia harshly enough) cleared Coleman of a potential doping violation allowing him to participate in the 2019 World Championships. Coleman was initially charged with three whereabout failures over 12 months. This would entail a 2 year ban. But not in the case of Coleman. USADA backdated one of the failures and made possible Coleman's participation in the World's.
Perhaps some details are necessary here. All top athletes must provide detailed information on where they will be each day so that they can be tested for doping out of competition. In practice they must provide a one-hour window of availability every day. There are two types of whereabouts failures: a missed test, and a filing failure. A missed test correspond to the impossibility to locate the athlete during the one-hour window. A filing failure corresponds to inaccurate or incomplete information provided by the athlete but also to an attempt by the control officer to test the athlete outside the one-hour window.
This last point is the crucial one. While a missed test correspond to a specific date, a filing failure is backdated to the start of the quarter in which it occurred. Coleman had a missed test on January 16, 2019 and two filing failures on June 6, 2018, and April 26. But the latter were backdated to 2019 April 1, 2018 and April 1, 2019 and as a consequence they did not fall within a 365-day period. (Yes, that's correct. The USADA decided that the two dates were separated by one year and one day). But wait, there's more. On June 6, 2018 the tester showed up at Coleman's residence at 0755 at allegedly started the collection attempt at 0801, one minute outside the collection window. So this failure was considered as a filing one. By one minute margin. And Coleman was finally scot-free.
What is really incredible is that after last year's near-miss, where the USADA lost all credibility by clearing him, Coleman should have been particularly vigilant. But what he did was to miss another whereabout test. And since the latter was in December 9, 2019 there is now an unambiguous count of 3 misses within one year which is tantamount to a doping violation entailing a two-year ban (more on this later).
Coleman's arguments are puerile. He was out dong Christmas shopping. He was just five minutes away. The tester didn’t even bother to call him. (In this case the officials belonged to the Athletics Integrity Unit, applying strictly the protocol that does not allow phone calls. When the tests are implemented by the USADA the athletes are forewarned by a phone call. Which gives the athletes definitely a leeway and allows them in principle to avoid undesirable tests).
And Coleman added:
“I think the attempt on December 9 was a purposeful attempt to get me to miss a test. I’ve been contacted by phone literally every other time I’ve been tested. Why would the AIU tell (the tester) not to call me?!”
The statement of the AIU on this point was clear:
“Any advanced notice of testing, in the form of a phone call or otherwise, provides an opportunity for athletes to engage in tampering or evasion or other improper conduct which can limit the efficacy of testing”.
The reactions were swift. K. Stefanidi, Olympic and World Champion, wrote:
“Just to be clear, testers DO NOT call you when they can’t find you. I have only heard of this happening to US athletes (many different athletes and occasions). Unless USADA has different rules than WADA, testers don’t call. You’re either where you said you’ll be or you’re not”. Coleman immediately lashed out at her: "What was your purpose in commenting?... If you had nothing positive to say why say anything at all".
M. Johnson (Olympic and World champion) wrote: "After a close call last year for three whereabout failures or missed tests, for Coleman to allow this to happen again will lead people to believe either you’re doping or you don’t take seriously the anti-doping efforts of the sport. What reason do we have to believe otherwise?". Later he added: “This from Christian Coleman: ‘I am willing to take a drug test every single day for the rest of my career for all I care to prove my innocence.’ Proving your innocence is the very reason athletes follow the whereabouts and testing rules which he has repeatedly violated!” And he finished with the remark "It’s clear to me he struggles to understand rules, process, professionalism. We should not assume his lack of understanding of those to mean he’s not hiding something. That’s always a possibility and that is the purpose of the anti-doping process and suspension for violating it".
D. Greene (World, European and Commonwealth champion) has a long twitter thread. It's too long to report here but highly informative. I suggest that you track it down and read it.
Ross Tucker, a sports physiologist for whom I have a high esteem, commented:
The “Where’s Christian?” game has a new twist. If you got so close to a ban before, escaping it so publicly only months before, I’d have thought you’d take no chances in your window. That said, if you want ‘slam-dunks’, anti-doping needs to do the little things better too.
And, later, he added:
Coleman’s statement "I am willing to take a drug test EVERY single day for the rest of my career for all I care to prove my innocence" jumped out. The Whereabouts system is designed specifically to provide this reassurance. The athlete already has an opportunity to “take a drug test every single day” (in theory). What they have to do is be where they said for an hour.
As a consequence of the missed tests Coleman is facing a two year suspension. His provisional suspension is listed as May 14, 2020, a full 13 months before the start of U.S. Olympic Trials. The Tokyo Olympics were rescheduled because of the pandemic and will open on July 23, 2021. With a two-year ban Coleman will be out of the Olympics. But wait! The rules allow for the possibility to reduce the ban to just one year. So now Coleman claims that a two-year sentence would be ‘overkill’. “In situations in the past, I’ve seen people get suspended for only a year,” he said. So he hopes that ‘some sort of deal’ might be agreed where he is suspended but could return just for the US olympic trials. If that turned out to be the case it would be a major blow to the credibility of athletics. And it would do disservice to all the US athletes who do not depend on their federation little schemes in order to excel. I cross my fingers for this not to happen but I am not overly optimistic. I am sure the CEO of USADA will explain to everybody that Coleman is a victim and that the real culprits are the russian.
There is a slight hope that there will not be unwarranted tolerance concerning Coleman. In fact, the WA president told the media that he "would be very surprised if there was any thought that a deal is going to be struck here or in any of these cases. It’s just not the system. That is not what the AIU does”. While not mentioning Coleman by name he added "If you’re hanging by a thread on one or even two of misses, then my instinct would be to be sitting by my front door for that hour. You wouldn’t risk not being there. And if they fall foul of this regularly they will be banned. I can’t put it in any blunter way. And that is what the AIU is there to do. It’s not a sort of an afterthought. Alongside biological passports and adverse analytical findings it is a central part of the anti-doping landscape”.
I do not particularly like Coleman and I think that there should be no clemency in this case of missed tests but it may turn out that Coleman gets away with a slap on the hand. After all we have seen, Gatlin, a double doping offender, win a world title. But let us keep in mind that doping suspicions have the bad tendency to cling to the individual. There are people who are ready to lump Coleman in with a list of other big-name Americans such as Tim Montgomery, Marion Jones, Justin Gatlin and Tyson Gay who have been busted for doping over the years. As far as I am concerned I reserve my opinion. Time will tell.
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