Latest news with #TravisTygart
Straits Times
3 days ago
- Sport
- Straits Times
Anti-doping bodies condemn ‘dangerous' drug-fueled Enhanced Games
The Enhanced Games team attend a press conference to announce the event scheduled for May 2026. PHOTO: REUTERS LOS ANGELES – Anti-doping bodies on May 22 condemned plans for the first edition of the Enhanced Games in Las Vegas, an Olympics-style event where athletes will be free to use performance-enhancing drugs. The World Anti-Doping Agency (Wada) and bodies across the world have taken aim at the event after organisers revealed the date, venue and format for the competition. The Enhanced Games will be staged in Las Vegas in May 2026, with athletes participating in three sports – athletics, swimming and weightlifting. Athletes will be allowed to use drugs which are banned across international sport such as steroids and human-growth hormones, with winners of each event receiving US$250,000 (S$322,000), and a bonus of US$1 million for anyone who breaks a world record. Aron D'Souza, the Australian entrepreneur who is the founder of the event, says the Games are an exercise in testing the boundaries of human performance. 'The Enhanced Games is renovating the Olympic model for the 21st century,' he said on May 21 as details of the Games were revealed. 'We are here to move humanity forward. The old rules didn't just hold back athletes, they held back humanity. 'We are not just organising competition, we are in the business of unlocking human potential. We are the vanguard of super-humanity.' The Games will take place from May 21-24 at the Resorts World hotel in Las Vegas. Swimming will hold 100m and 50m freestyle events, along with 100m and 50m butterfly. Athletics events include the 100m and 100m and 110m hurdles. Weightlifters will compete in the snatch and clean & jerk disciplines. Wada, the global anti-doping watchdog, condemned plans for the event as 'dangerous', voicing concern it could lead athletes around the world to dabble in illicit substances with potentially deadly consequences. 'Wada condemns the Enhanced Games as a dangerous and irresponsible concept,' the agency said in a statement. 'The health and well-being of athletes is Wada's No. 1 priority. Clearly this event would jeopardise that as it seeks to promote the use of powerful substances and methods by athletes for the purposes of entertainment and marketing. 'There have been many examples of athletes suffering serious long-term side-effects from their use of prohibited substances and methods. Some have died.' Travis Tygart, the head of the United States Anti-Doping Agency (Usada), said the event was a 'dangerous clown show that puts profit over principle'. Australia's anti-doping body, Sport Integrity Australia (SIA), also condemned the risks posed to athletes participating in the Enhanced Games. 'We work to ensure that sport is safe and fair to all,' SIA chief executive Sarah Benson said in a statement. 'The Enhanced Games is promoting the complete opposite and poses a significant risk to athlete health and safety.' D'Souza, however, has pushed back on those criticisms, insisting that the competition would be conducted 'safely'. AFP Join ST's Telegram channel and get the latest breaking news delivered to you.
Telegraph
01-05-2025
- Sport
- Telegraph
Athletes warned kissing strangers and one-night stands risk drug bans
Elite athletes have been warned that even a kiss, let alone a one-night stand with a stranger, could leave themselves open to a career-threatening anti-doping violation. Arguing for a change in the World Anti-Doping Agency (Wada) code to raise the threshold for substances that can be transported 'through intimacy', Travis Tygart, who heads the United States Anti-Doping Agency (Usada), said that the current situation risked diverting resources away from catching real cheats. Tygart, who oversaw the operation that exposed Lance Armstrong's US Postal cycling team, is regarded as one of the most foremost anti-doping crusaders in world sport, but he wants greater leniency in this area. The tennis player Richard Gasquet once returned an anti-doping violation after kissing a woman in a nightclub who had been taking cocaine, but won his appeal after the woman herself corroborated his account. Tygart, who was speaking at the annual Sport Resolutions conference in London, also cited an American boxer called Virginia Fuchs, who avoided a suspension after she was able to show that an adverse finding had been caused by sexual transmission from her male partner. 'With Gasquet, he managed to get her to come and give evidence to say, 'Yes, I use cocaine. I kissed him in this nightclub',' said Mark Hovell, a sports lawyer at Mills & Reeve. Asked what would happen if an athlete had a kiss or one-night stand with someone they could not later track down, Hovell said: 'That's the problem – they might not have the evidence they need.' Tygart said that it was 'pathetic' that athletes could be placed in this situation. 'I think based on the cases we've seen: watch who you kiss, watch out who you have an intimate relationship with,' Tygart said. 'I think it's a pretty ridiculous world we're expecting our athletes to live in, which is why we're pushing to try to change these rules to make it more reasonable and fair. 'The onus is always on the athletes – we as anti-doping organisations, need to take some of that responsibility back. And I worry how many of the intentional cheats are actually getting away because we're spending so much time and resources on the cases that end up being someone kissing someone at a bar.' Tygart later explained that, as with some substances on the anti-doping code that are found in food, there were certain substances that can transfer between people through 'intimacy' and that it was simply a question of adjusting the minimum reporting level. Wada dropped a lawsuit against Usada earlier this year after Tygart alleged a cover-up in the handling of 23 Chinese swimmers, who were cleared to compete at the Tokyo Olympics. The China Anti-Doping Agency (Chinada) had said that positive tests for the heart medication trimetazidine (TMZ) were caused by contamination, a finding that Wada said that it could not disprove. It defended its processes and accused Tygart of a 'completely false and defamatory' claim. Tygart said on Thursday that China had still faced no consequences for a 'failure to follow the rules' and said that, according to a new study of the Tokyo and Paris Games, potentially 96 medals were impacted by the 23 swimmers who still competed. 'Until we get reasonable answers and honest answers, nobody should let it go away,' Tygart said. 'The big picture is you're talking 96 medals... 96 potential medals that the world deserves to know. And clean athletes certainly deserve to know. 'If we can't get Wada right, our athletes and others around the world are going to suffer by not having a fair and level playing field. We [the US in 2028] don't want to host a Sochi Olympic Games where dozens, if not more medals, are ultimately returned because the cheating was so rampant at those Games, as we now know.' Chinada says that the swimmers had not broken anti-doping rules and that the results were caused by contamination.
Express Tribune
23-02-2025
- Sport
- Express Tribune
WADA drops legal action against Tygart
The World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) said that it has dropped legal action against the US Anti-Doping Agency (USADA) and its chief Travis Tygart over a dispute about Chinese swimmers testing positive for a banned substance in 2021. "In the interest of moving on and focusing our efforts on strengthening the global anti-doping system... WADA has made the decision to withdraw the lawsuit against Mr. Tygart and USADA," a WADA spokesperson told AFP. "Over several months, Travis Tygart made incessant defamatory allegations against WADA without any supporting evidence in relation to its review of the no-fault contamination cases involving 23 swimmers from China." Tygart had accused WADA of a cover-up when it cleared the Chinese swimmers to compete in the Tokyo Olympics in 2021 despite testing positive for a banned medication, trimetazidine. He has long been a critic of WADA attacking them in the aftermath of the Russian state-sponsored doping scheme surrounding the 2014 Sochi Winter Olympics. In January, Tygart supported a US government decision to withhold a WADA dues payment of $3.6 million. The WADA spokesperson said that the body had responded with a lawsuit in Switzerland, citing "an attack on WADA's reputation, based on groundless conspiracy theories." In the case of the Chinese swimmers, WADA says it was not at fault in accepting the "food contamination" explanation put forward by the Chinese authorities. It said it considers the matter closed since a report it commissioned from Swiss prosecutor Eric Cottier found that WADA had worked "autonomously, independently and professionally". The WADA spokesperson said that the findings had cleared the body's reputation, making legal action unneccessary. "Given the clear findings of the Cottier report, which have been universally accepted by the anti-doping community and wider public, that aim has been achieved." AFP
