To understand why the World Anti-Doping Agency is appealing the case against 34 current and former Essendon players you need to go to back to Windy Hill and the end of the 2012 pre-season, when this mess really got started.
Suki Hobson, a weights coach who came to the club as part of Dean Robinson’s new high-performance team, is feeling run down. Stephen Dank, a sports scientist who previously worked with Robinson at NRL club Manly and more recently the Gold Coast Suns, suggests she try a shot of Hexarelin. Hobson agrees. She takes a vial home and administers it for a few weeks before deciding it is having no effect.
A year later, when Hobson is interviewed by investigators from the Australian Sports Anti-Doping Authority, she openly admits to taking Hexarelin, although she says she didn’t know at the time it was banned by WADA.
There is no dispute that Hexarelin, a growth hormone-releasing peptide, is a banned substance. There is no dispute that Dank, who was employed by Essendon on a one-year contract, was covered by the AFL anti-doping policy at the time he supplied a little glass vial labelled Hexarelin to Hobson. It appears a clear case of trafficking a banned substance.
The AFL tribunal which heard the case against Dank and the Essendon players decided it wasn’t. Its reasons for judgment against Dank handed down last month explain why.
Like the Thymosin peptide sourced from China at the end of 2011 by drug importer Shane Charter, prepared by pharmacist Nima Alavi and allegedly administered to Essendon players by Dank, the providence of the Hexarelin-labelled vials Dank kept in his fridge at Windy Hill is unclear.
The only documents ASADA provided to the tribunal relating to Hexarelin were an invoice sent from Alavi’s pharmacy to Essendon in error and a dodgy certificate of analysis that ASADA’s own scientific expert doubts.
“There are no records, apart from the tax invoice from Como, of the compounding or dispensing of Hexarelin to Mr Dank,” the tribunal notes. “Apart from the certificate which the tribunal has referred to, there is no evidence of any analysis being conducted on a substance said to be Hexarelin. In particular, there is no evidence of any analysis of the substance labelled Hexarelin in the vial observed by Ms Hobson.”
It was satisfied Dank gave Hobson what he believed was Hexarelin. As a consequence, he was found guilty of attempted trafficking. However, it was not satisfied that the substance actually was Hexarelin. Not in the case of Suki Hobson. Not in the cases of Sue Anderson and Paul Turk, two other Essendon staff members given something purported to be Hexarelin by Dank.
When WADA reviewed the evidence gathered by ASADA and the reasons of the AFL tribunal, the Hexarelin episode and others like it convinced the global anti-doping body that a rehearsing was needed before the Court of Arbitration for Sport.
If a tribunal cannot be satisfied that someone who admits to taking Hexarelin from a vial marked Hexarelin after being told by a sports scientist it is Hexarelin has indeed taken Hexarelin, the task confronting anti-doping investigators verges on the impossible. The standard of proof required for an anti-doping offence is comfortable satisfaction. WADA believes the AFL tribunal demanded way too much satisfaction. A brief statement posted on the Court of Arbitration for Sport website makes this clear: “WADA requests that the CAS issue a new decision based on an appropriate burden of proof and evidentiary standards.”
As colleague Patrick Smith reported in yesterday’s
The Australian, WADA will seek a rehearsing of the case against the 34 players, who were all cleared by the AFL tribunal of taking the banned peptide Thymosin Beta-4, and the case against Stephen Dank. Of 34 violations of anti-doping rules alleged by ASADA, only 10 were upheld by the tribunal chaired by retired Victorian County Court judge David Jones.
Although the tribunal’s reasoning in the case of Hobson appears odd, it should not be judged in isolation. The reasons for its decision against Dank and the reasons for its decision against the 34 players, although published two weeks apart, are intended as a single document. When read this way, the tribunal judgment reveals a strong streak of common sense and consistency.
The tribunal, once confronted with the murky, loosely regulated world of peptide dealing, Dank’s ineptitude as a sports scientist and the contradictory accounts of the two other elusive figures at the centre of this scandal — Shane Charter and Nima Alavi — decided to accept little at face value. In particular, anything said by Dank, whether to players, journalists, other club officials or private clients, was given little weight in the absence of corroboration.
As part of its case, ASADA accused Dank of administering Hexarelin to Essendon footballers. This relied on testimony provided by Sandor Earl, a former NRL player who admitted to taking banned drugs supplied by Dank, and Dr Peter Fricker, a respected sports physician and former AIS director who twice met Dank in Qatar during 2012. Both recounted to ASADA conversations they had with Dank about giving Dons players Hexarelin.
The weakness in Earl and Fricker’s accounts is they are based entirely on what Dank told them. In the absence of supporting evidence, neither swayed the tribunal.
ASADA separately accused Dank of trafficking a swag of banned substances by supplying a supplement drink to Essendon players which advertised Growth Factor 1, Mechano Growth Factor, Follistatin and Thymosin Beta-4 among its list of ingredients. When the Australian Sports Drug Testing Laboratory analysed a sample of the product, sold as Humanofort, no banned substances were detected. The drink claimed to be something it wasn’t. Dank was found guilty of attempted trafficking but cleared of trafficking.
Doubting whether a substance marked Hexarelin is in fact Hexarelin may seem overly sceptical but not once you learn that it has been imported from China with the original labels and certificate of analysis deliberately removed, and provided to Dank without any reliable documentation or analytical testing.
For the same reason, the tribunal was not satisfied that Gold Coast Suns defender Nathan Bock took another banned substance, CJC-1295, despite evidence from Dean Robinson that this is what Bock was given. Bock was given a vial purportedly containing CJC-1295 and syringes at Robinson’s house. Bock subsequently admitted to investigators that he injected himself with whatever was in the vial. Again, Dank was found guilty of attempted trafficking but not trafficking.
“The tribunal is comfortably satisfied that Mr Dank provided to Mr Robinson what Mr Dank believed was the prohibited substance CJC-1295,” the tribunal found.
“However, was the substance in fact CJC-1295? This is again a situation where there is no evidence of any analysis of the substance involved. There is no evidence as to the source of the substance.”
The tribunal judgment notes that you don’t necessarily need a certificate of analysis to prove a peptide is what it purports to be. Yet in the end, this is the standard to which ASADA’s case is held.
Of a dozen banned substances that Dank is alleged to have trafficked, the tribunal is comfortably satisfied on only two counts; providing Mechano Growth Factor to Carlton’s tackling coach John Donehue and GHRP-6 to a baseball coach. In both instances, ASADA produced reliable certificates of analysis supporting the providence of those peptides.
WADA hopes that CAS won’t be so exacting next time round, that it will be less troubled by the inconsistencies and evidentiary deficiencies in the case.
Perversely, it wants CAS to place more faith in the word of Stephen Dank.