The scandal erupted in 2024 when Rahul Gupta, the head of the United States’ National Drug Control Authority sharply attacked WADA for allowing 23 Chinese swimmers to compete, although there is a strong suspicion that they used doping drugs disguised as heart drugs.
The US state has since failed to pay its WADA membership fee, which was $3.6 million for 2024 and $3.7 million for 2025, more than twice that of the next nation. By the way, WADA’s annual budget is 50 million dollars.
According to James Fitzgerald, the WADA spokesman, there is nothing to see here, nothing new, as of 2020, the introduction of sanctions against countries that are in arrears in membership fees is on the agenda, reports the AP news agency.
The anti-doping body meets next Tuesday, and the most severe punishment in WADA’s rules is to ban heads of state from non-paying countries from the Olympics and Paralympics.
There is no mention of how this would be technically possible. No wonder Rahul Gupta gushed:
I have never heard of a Swiss organization with a fifty million dollar budget being able to prevent the President of the United States from entering a sporting event. How do they want to implement the ban? Will they issue a warrant through Interpol? This is all ridiculous, it seems they haven’t thought it through.
Nota bene, Gupta was a member of WADA’s executive committee two years ago.
(Cover photo: Donald Trump on February 11, 2025. Photo: Andrew Harnik / Getty Images)
