The World Anti-Doping Agency was set up in 1999 to protect clean athletes from cheats and on Wednesday it was fighting the good fight against the might of Russia at the Court of Arbitration for Sport in Switzerland. The stakes could not be higher, with Russia desperate to move on from the scandals that have stained its reputation as a sporting superpower and WADA determined to hold the line against state-sponsored doping.
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If WADA wins, it will have taken down the biggest single cheat in its 21-year history, striking a blow for fair play everywhere, probably saving itself from bankruptcy in the process. If it loses, Russia’s cynical attempts to steal medals can be consigned to the past and its stars will again compete in national colours on the global stage, perhaps even in major championships on Russian soil; next summer’s UEFA European Championship, for example.
Much to fight for, then.
Unfortunately, while WADA was crusading in the east, it was surrendering a less noble campaign in the west, because at 2pm, at the High Court of Justice in London, a lawyer acting for the agency read a statement that brought an ignominious end to a four-year dispute with Crystal Palace defender Mamadou Sakho.
Instead of the calm defiance it has shown in its wrestling match with Vladimir Putin’s regime, after leading one of its signatory bodies into prosecuting an athlete guilty of understandable ignorance, at worst, WADA could only say sorry to the 30-year-old Frenchman for the “defamatory statements” from its press office, which compounded that overreaction.
“WADA accepts that Mr Sakho did not breach the anti-doping regulations, did not cheat, had no intention of gaining any advantage and acted in good faith,” the lawyer told the court.
“WADA regrets the damage the defamatory allegations caused to Mr Sakho’s reputation and the distress, hurt and embarrassment caused to him. To indicate the sincerity of this apology, WADA has agreed with its insurers to pay Mr Sakho a substantial sum of damages. WADA has also agreed to bear Mr Sakho’s reasonable costs.”
It is unlikely that “a substantial sum of damages” runs to the £13 million Sakho believes this saga has cost him in lost earnings but the parties’ combined legal bill will be close to £1 million. WADA’s excess on its policy and the increase in its insurance premium is a price it can ill afford as it tries to tackle doping on an annual budget of less than £30 million.
And no amount of damages can replace what Sakho really lost: the chance to win trophies with club and country, and a central role in his former club Liverpool’s revival under Jurgen Klopp.
This road to contrition started with a regulation, post-match drugs test after the second leg of Liverpool’s Europa League last 16 tie with Manchester United at Old Trafford in March 2016. Sakho had turned in another solid display in a 1-1 draw that secured a 3-1 aggregate win for Liverpool but his urine sample was found to contain higenamine, a chemical compound present in several plants. Other places it is found are weight-loss pills, sports supplements — although even there it is sometimes listed by another name, norcoclaurine — and, since 2017, WADA’s list of prohibited substances.
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But in March 2016, when Sakho tested positive for the substance, the banned list only mentioned the family of drugs, beta-2 agonists, to which it has now been agreed higenamine belongs — but at the time that was not clear — and not higenamine itself. Beta-2 agonists cause smooth muscle relaxation, which is why they are used in asthma medication, but they are also believed to burn fat, hence their appeal to dieters, and build muscle, which is why they are on WADA’s naughty step.
So when European football’s governing body UEFA informed Liverpool of Sakho’s positive test a month after that United game, he was benched, pending the outcome of an investigation.
The timing could not have been worse for the player, his club or his country, as the voluntary suspension ruled him out of Liverpool’s Europa League semi-final against Villarreal and the climax of the Premier League season, Klopp’s first at Anfield. The 30-day ban that followed soon after took him out of consideration for the final against Sevilla and France’s squad for Euro 2016.
It is hard to say whether or not France missed him on home soil that summer, he had been an automatic selection during his breakthrough season at Paris Saint-Germain in 2013 and first year with Liverpool in 2014, but struggled for form and fitness in 2015.
What is certain, however, is that Liverpool missed a man who had become their most reliable defender by early 2016, a player who had kept Borussia Dortmund’s Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang quiet in the first leg of the Europa League quarter-final before scoring the equaliser in a famous come-from-behind win in the second leg at Anfield, and Sakho would never attain that status again.
Some Palace fans may struggle to believe the inconsistent performer they have watched since 2017 could be the difference in the final of a European club competition but that was the immediate response from Liverpool fans on social media when The Athletic broke the story of WADA’s belated apology to Sakho.
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Klopp’s men led 1-0 at half-time but poor defending, particularly down the left-hand side of the pitch that Sakho’s replacement Kolo Toure was meant to bolster, saw Sevilla score three goals in 25 minutes at the start of the second period to secure a third straight Europa League title. The victory earned them a slot in the following season’s Champions League, while defeat meant Liverpool would miss out on European football altogether.
Rose-tinted complaints of robbery from Liverpool fans today are overstated but it is fair to say Sakho was at the height of his powers that spring. In a tweet after his dominant display against Dortmund, former England star and Match Of The Day presenter Gary Lineker wrote “Sakho may look awkward and always on the brink of stumbling over the ball, but he’s an exceptional defender”.
He would also have most likely been a starter for France at Euro 2016. Like Liverpool, the hosts finished as runners-up in that tournament, losing 1-0 to Portugal in the final.
That game took place on July 10, two days after a UEFA disciplinary panel dismissed the doping case against Sakho on the grounds that higenamine was not on WADA’s banned list; there was some doubt that it even was a beta-2 agonist and WADA had not clearly communicated higenamine’s status to its accredited laboratories. In fact, many of WADA’s labs were not even screening for the substance at the time.
In August, a month after that decision had been published, WADA issued a press statement that restated its belief that Sakho had tested positive for a performance-enhancing substance on its banned list but the “low degree of fault” meant his month’s ban was probably sufficient.
In the meantime, however, Sakho’s attempts to reintegrate himself into Klopp’s side had gone disastrously sideways, as he was sent home early from a pre-season tour of the United States after nearly missing the flight out and then being late for medical treatment and a team meal. He would never regain his manager’s trust and in January 2017 he joined Palace on a loan that would become permanent the following summer after a string of man-of-the-match displays for his new side.
It would be fair to say Liverpool have hardly missed him, just as it would be fair to say he has probably not entirely justified his £24 million transfer fee and huge wages at Palace, but he has clearly laboured under a cloud that was not of his own making.
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In early 2017, during his best run of form in south London, WADA responded to a critical report from UEFA on his case by once again saying he was guilty of doping and his conduct was “culpable”.
This was the last straw for Sakho and he and his image-rights company, MS Top Limited, started legal action against an organisation that was created to protect athletes.
WADA chose to fight the claim and even argued it was not the main reason for his transfer from Liverpool to Palace — a demotion, of sorts. The agency’s lawyers, on the other hand, pointed to his timekeeping issues and general falling-out with Klopp.
It was a line WADA could not hold, though. The writing was on the wall from the moment a pre-trial hearing in January agreed with Sakho’s legal team that he could be defamed by WADA’s statements in press articles that were in themselves not defamatory. And the defamatory effect of these statements could be multiplied with every republication of WADA’s combative stance on the matter.
Those two short paragraphs — on what WADA clearly believed was an open-and-shut case of strict liability on the part of an athlete who should have paid closer attention to the ingredients of his supplements — have proved to be very expensive, financially and reputationally.
Nick McAleenan is a defamation and media law partner at Manchester-based JMW Solicitors.
“WADA has clearly prioritised its own reputation over that of the player,” McAleenan tells The Athletic.
“Having already been found to be wrong, it compounded those fundamental errors by persisting in making highly defamatory statements in subsequent press briefing emails. Faced with legal proceedings for defamation, it’s been forced to make nothing short of a grovelling apology in open court as well as agreeing to pay substantial damages and costs — it is an extremely troubling episode.
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“To have the agency overseeing international anti-doping behaving in such a manner, when it must have been fully aware of the fact that allegations of this nature are potentially career-ending for a professional sportsman or woman, can only undermine the confidence of other athletes that they will be treated fairly.”
Speaking outside the court, Sakho said: “I feel happy. Happy for my family, for all my friends, for the people who were around me during those tough years. It’s not easy when you are a professional athlete and are accused of doping. It is the worst thing that can happen to you.
“I always believed in my lawyers. That’s my squad, my team. We always said the truth would take time to come out and I am happy WADA has said sorry. Now everything is behind me and I just want to look forward.”
In a statement posted on Instagram and Twitter in French and English, Sakho expressed his relief that his fight with WADA was over and the agency had finally accepted he had not cheated.
“There is nothing worse for an athlete than the suspicion of doping,” he adds.
“I have lived through it with all the consequences it has had for my career, my image and even my personal life. Fortunately, many people believed in me. My family, friends and supporters have always been there.
“Receiving the official apology from WADA was for me something essential to be able to turn the page, to continue to move forward and above all to pass on my experience. Always fight to the end to defend your convictions!”
WADA, for its part, has nothing it wants to add to its open statement in court, beyond confirming it has “settled the dispute with Mr Sakho which has been the subject of some publicity since 2016”.
That statement is unlikely to have defamed anyone but describing Sakho’s ordeal as “some publicity” suggests there are people at WADA, an organisation with the very best of intentions, who still find it very difficult to admit when they have made a mistake.
(Photo: Sebastian Frej/MB Media/Getty Images)
