WADA slams media trial amid athletics doping allegations

The World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) president Craig Reedie saw his worries turn into reality.

On Friday, WADA said in a statement that women's marathon world record holder Paula Radcliffe felt "unfairly implicated by the discussions" of UK Parliament's Select Committee's Evidence Sessions on Tuesday prompted by the early August ARD and Sunday Times reports.

The reports said they obtained a leaked database belonging to the International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF), which contained more than 12,000 blood tests from around 5,000 athletes for the years 2001 to 2012.

The reports claimed that the data revealed an "extraordinary extent of cheating" and that more than 50 Olympic and world gold medals during that period could be tainted by drug use.

"It is very unfortunate that any athlete should feel implicated and that they have to defend their reputation as a result," WADA director general David Howman said on Friday.

Radcliffe, who retired after this year's London Marathon, claimed the pressure being put on her to release her blood test data was "bordering on abuse". she allowed Sky News to release her blood test results on Thursday she felt implicated by the UK parliament hearing on blood doping.

The 41-year-old Englishwoman's "off-scores", the measures used to gauge an athlete's blood values, in the three tests were 114.86, 109.86 and 109.3, according to Sky News.

Anything above 103 recorded by a female athlete can be a trigger for investigation, but the threshold can rise for a number of reasons, including altitude training and tests taken immediately after extreme exertion.

Howman said that a positive result is a complicated process.

"Let me be clear and reiterate...no information in the leaked database from before 2009 - which was before the Athlete Biological Passport (ABP) was introduced - could ever be considered as doping, legally or otherwise.

"Tarnishing an athlete's name based on values from pre-2009 would be wholly irresponsible. At best, blood values from this time could only be used as indicators of the need for targeted future testing of those athletes that have abnormal or unusual values," he said.

"Even athletes' data from post-2009 - when the ABP had been introduced - is not necessarily indicative of doping. The strength of the ABP is that it monitors selected biological variables over time, via the blood, which indirectly reveals the effects of doping," he said in the statement.

Back at the Beijing world championships, WADA head Reedie again voiced his concerns about athletes being pressured to release their data.

"It is up to the individual athlete to decide what they wish to do with their own data. My advice to them is they should be a little cautious before they do that because it perhaps is possible not everybody will understand what the data actually meant," he said.

As WADA launched an urgent investigation by its Independent Commission on Aug. 7, Howman suggested athletes turn to the IC if they felt their rights infringed.

"If any athlete feels their rights are being eroded or inappropriately challenged as a result of the ARD and Sunday Times reports, they must refer those concerns to the Commission. This is the correct channel versus trial by media," he said. Endit