THE World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) has given the Jamaica Anti-doping Commission (JADCO) a passing grade for their handling of the doping cases involving five Jamaican athletes last summer.

WADA’s director general David Howman, who left the island yesterday after conducting a two-day audit of JADCO, told the Observer that his organisation found nothing wrong with JADCO’s handling of the well publicised cases.

“The individual cases have already been subject to scrutiny by us (WADA) because we have a right of appeal to the Court of Arbitration for Sports (CAS).

“… My legal team has viewed the cases; they’ve looked at it from a point of view of legal analysis, and that includes process, and we don’t have any degree of dissatisfaction,” Howman told the Observer during an exclusive interview at Jamaica Pegasus Hotel in Kingston. Howman was in Jamaica at the invitation of Sports Minister Olivia Grange.

Yohan Blake, Allodin Fothergill, Lansford Spence and Marvin Anderson were slapped with three-month bans and missed the IAAF World Championships in Berlin, Germany, after returning adverse analytical findings for the prohibited substance 4-Methyl-2-Hexanamine at the Jamaican Trials in June.

A fifth athlete, Sherri-Ann Brooks, later accepted a three-month ban from the IAAF for use of the same substance. However, JADCO came under intense criticism over the handling of the five cases because its executive director Dr Patrece Charles-Freeman had appealed the initial ruling of the Kent Gammon-chaired Anti-Doping Disciplinary Committee, which cleared the athletes on the grounds that the drug was not on WADA’s banned list.

JADCO’s grouse was that the substance had a similar structure to a banned stimulant, according to Wada.

The appeals tribunal, headed by the late Justice Ransford Langrin, decided that a three-month ban from competition was appropriate for the four male athletes.

Howman, who has been in charge of WADA since 2003, found nothing wrong with the process.

“I understand that there was more turmoil on the national stage here in Jamaica, which I’ve only just heard about in the last 24 hours, and my team of more technical expertise than I… is looking at all the processes to see whether, not necessarily on that particular occasion, but whether the processes are OK in terms of the WADA compliance and we will provide a technical report in that respect,” the anti-doping tsar added.

Quizzed as to whether he was satisfied with the operations of JADCO, WADA’s head honcho replied: “Well, I think the answer to that is that that will be the subject of our report. But this country has nothing to fear — you have a very good law; you have a very good team of very expert people who are serving on the commission, a vast amount experience, so you’ve got a foundation which is perfect.

“What we’re doing is saying you have the foundation… the practice of the rules being done to the best of the quality you should expect,” Howman added.

In the meantime, the WADA boss indicated that it was “normal” for his organisation to look at important sporting countries like Jamaica, Russia, Nigeria, Turkey, Brazil and India to ensure that the national anti-doping programmes are working.

“Jamaica is in a group that we’re currently assisting… all important sporting countries who have… new anti-doping agencies and we want to make sure that they’re established so we as the eyes and the ears of the world can tell the world, ‘good programme’,” Howman said.