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In a fraught meeting in May, top officials at the World Anti-Doping Agency were warned that a computer glitch might allow athletes accused of doping to compete at the Paris Games.
Sept. 27, 2024, 3:06 p.m. ET
Just weeks before this summer’s Olympics in Paris, officials at the headquarters of the World Anti-Doping Agency got some startling news.
Lawyers for the organization told a meeting of top officials in late May that a series of problems with its databases had led to corrupted, missing or incorrect data related to at least 2,000 cases, and as a result, the agency had even lost track of more than 900 test results from athletes who had been accused of breaking antidoping rules.
That stunning revelation came with another unsettling disclosure: Because of the data problems, the agency could no longer determine which cases it should be monitoring, and its lawyers were now unsure if its staff was properly tracking cases of athletes who might soon be heading to Paris.
“The more we dig,” the lawyers admitted in a PowerPoint presentation used at the meeting, “the more we find.”
The previously undisclosed account of the meeting raises serious new questions about the performance of the agency, known as WADA, which has come under intense scrutiny this year for its handling of possible doping in swimming.
The scale of the data problems deepened concerns inside the organization about its capacity to stay on top of its expanding workload.
