Schlittig doping case How the empire strikes back against a young German weightlifter
The German weightlifter Vicky Schlittig has now been acquitted by two legal bodies, but the federation and the World Anti-Doping Agency are still pushing for a four-year ban.
Vicky Schlittig has long since tired of worrying much about her sport, weightlifting, or about her doping trial. She used to lift weights and wanted to compete in European and World Championships - with a long-term goal: to compete for Germany at the Olympic Games in Los Angeles in 2028.
Nothing remains of this dream: Vicky Schlittig tested positive in a doping sample in November 2021. And, although scientific experts consider her innocent due to various unusual features of the sample and a German criminal court and a first instance of the International Court of Arbitration for Sport, CAS, have already acquitted her, anti-doping bodies continue to fight for a rigorous punishment of the young athlete. They want her to be banned for four years.
"You should never say never", Schlittig said, who is now training to become a fitness merchant, tells ARD's doping editorial team: "At the moment, however, I have lost my motivation to continue doing this sport. I still love it. I like to watch it and it is still a great sport for me. But for me, it doesn't make sense to do it at the moment, because clearly the International Weightlifting Federation doesn't want me."
Fear of a precedent judgement
Her problem: Her case is representative of injustices in the anti-doping system. In order to be able to ban athletes at all, it is the rule that athletes who have tested positive must prove their innocence. But especially in cases where the athlete did not dope, but came into contact with the banned substance unnoticed and unintentionally, it is difficult for them to prove it. Sometimes it is impossible. Especially when weeks or months pass between the test and the publication of the result.
Nevertheless, the International Testing Agency (ITA) and the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) do everything to defend the principle despite the injustices. They are fighting against softening it for the sake of greater justice, because they apparently fear that with their already low catch rate, one or two dopers might then slip through the cracks. They would rather, it seems, occasionally sacrifice an innocent athlete.
“We have to be more caring and compassionate and understand the rules, and how they can potentially destroy athletes lives and have better policies that still catch dopers and ensure that intentional cheats can't get away with intentional cheating", says even a staunch anti-doping campaigner like Travis Tygart, head of the US Anti-Doping Agency (USADA): “We need to ensure the policies are better designed so that we're not destroying lives of innocent athletes like we've seen too many times."
For Schlittig's guilty verdict, the ITA and WADA continue to fight to prevent other athletes from using it as a precedent. The ITA does not believe Schlittig's reasoning is sufficient. WADA argues that the CAS decision in the first instance “was not consistent with the World Anti-Doping Code as well as the case law of the CAS". Quite as if the WADA Code does not allow an acquittal after a positive sample. And the reference to the individual case decisions, which are supposed to form a kind of CAS customary law, does not work because most arbitration decisions are not published by the non-governmental court. Among them are even decisions that are considered precedents. Even the Schlittig verdict in the first instance. Neither the public nor the experts can be aware of the law developed in this way, mostly behind closed doors.
Contamination scenario like in the ARD film "Guilty".
Schlittig cannot prove with certainty how the substance Oral-Turinabol, a classic of East German state doping, got into her body, but biochemical abnormalities with other factors prove her innocence, according to experts. In short, her sample was unique in all recorded recent positive cases in lacking the associated metabolites necessary for normal, oral, absorption of the substance. That was enough for the CAS judge. Thus, in its first-instance acquittal of Schlittig under case number 2022/ADD/53, the CAS held “that based upon the prior and subsequent negative tests and the low/trace amounts, in combination with the testimony and evidence as to the numerous contacts that occurred during the few days before the anti-doping-rule-violation, that it is probable that Ms. Schlittig was subjected to inadvertent, transdermal administration that was not intentional, and thus that she bears no fault“.
Experts have thus certified that, based on the latest research, contamination via the skin is likely in her case, the transfer of a very small amount, possibly accidentally or even as sabotage. In 2022, the ARD doping editorial team had highlighted such a scenario in the film "Guilty" and had accompanied a scientific experiment on this on film. In this experiment, there were countless positive samples just from fleeting skin contact when the doping substance was on the skin.
But in Schlittig's case there was still no pardon at first: the potentially innocent weightlifter was provisionally banned for almost two years. So now even the US doping hunter Tygart, who is otherwise known for his resoluteness and who brought down the notorious doper Lance Armstrong with a lot of patience, is calling on the anti-doping authorities to be more flexible in cases like Vicky Schlittig’s. To Tygart, it seems that in this unequal battle of the anti-doping empire against a minor weightlifter, they want to strain the legal remedies until they get to a judge who agrees with them.
"It's a fascinating case", says the head of USADA, "the experts agree the substance had no performance enhancement and agreed that the way it got into her system was transdermal. This case was at the anti-doping division of CAS and decided by a CAS arbitrator. We ought to have some confidence in that. And I just say the legal process, it drags on for one, but then also puts athletes in a position where they're having to spend and augment large sums of money in order to ultimately get to a fair outcome. If we sanction athletes who aren't guilty of intentional cheating or negligence, that's a problem. I don't think it is a system that is fair to athletes and one that we should all support.“