Peter Bol should be in Brisbane today for the start of the Australian Track and Field Championships, readying himself to become the first man to win a fourth 800-metre title.
Instead, he’ll be at home in Melbourne trying to make sense of how his life and career have been upended after being accused of being a drug cheat.
“As angry as I am, and as much as I’d like to prove a point by going to the nationals and medalling, I won’t be there,” Bol says. “I only started proper training a week and a half ago. I want to be smart about things.”
As revealed by The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age, two independent laboratories have sensationally claimed there is no evidence the 29-year-old used the banned substance EPO after Sports Integrity Australia provisionally suspended him in January for returning a positive A-sample.
His ban was lifted last month after the B-sample returned an atypical finding (which is neither positive nor negative) yet the stain of being a drug cheat remains, especially so because SIA’s investigation into Bol remains “ongoing”.
Bol’s US-based lawyer, Paul Greene, has written to SIA, demanding the investigation end based on the expert findings. One of those experts, Dr David Chen from the University of British Columbia, argues the Australian Sports Drug Testing Laboratory (ASDTL) incorrectly analysed the sample. In his opinion, the data doesn’t indicate any use of synthetic EPO.
“SIA is the results management authority under the WADA rules,” Greene said on Tuesday. “This means SIA is ultimately responsible — not the lab — for deciding how to handle lab reports and results and whether to make any announcements or send notices to an athlete.”
Regardless of what SIA does next, serious questions remain unanswered.
News of Bol’s positive A-sample, which might not have been positive at all, was leaked to the media just days before he was tipped to be named Young Australian of the Year. Both SIA and Athletics Australia deny they were the source of the leak.
Given SIA and the ASDTL are government agencies, and AA relies heavily on federal government grants for survival, a Senate inquiry into the matter should be considered.
Peter Bol will miss the Australian Athletics Championships.Credit:Getty
When I met Bol at his Melbourne home earlier this week, he was typically chirpy and optimistic, but it wasn’t long before he started detailing the cost of this ordeal.
Not so much legal costs, which are sitting at $50,000 and could be as much as $300,000 if the matter drags on, but the damage to his reputation.
In December last year, he delivered a speech in Stirling, Western Australia, about the broad issue of integrity, and answered questions from the floor about doping.
“I could just imagine the people who sat there, listening to that talk,” he says. “Then, three weeks later, the news comes out and I’m done for the same thing. Trying to communicate to my Mum what I was getting done for was the saddest moment. You can’t put a price on that.”
Bol and his family came to this country after escaping war-torn Sudan when he was four years old. He shot to prominence following his heroics at the Tokyo Olympics in 2021, when he became the first Australian man to reach the 800m final since Ralph Doubel won the event in Mexico City in 1968.
Despite what’s played out in the last few months, he isn’t bitter. Instead, he wants the system to change.
“You can be so angry but now is not the time,” he says. “If you’re an organisation like SIA, you should have people in place that are checking up and checking up when someone’s reputation is on the line. All your sponsors are on hold because you’ve been branded a drug cheat. You’re not an athlete anymore. It says to me that you can work as hard as you want – this is a land of opportunity – but it’s hard to get justice if you don’t have the resources or team around you.”
The Bol camp has been on the front foot from the moment SIA officials knocked on his door on January 10 to tell him about the positive A-sample.
‘Trying to communicate to my Mum what I was getting done for was the saddest moment. You can’t put a price on that.’
Peter Bol
Most drug cheats scatter like cockroaches when the kitchen light is turned on, but Bol has been visible from the very start, first via his social media accounts and then through various media interviews.
In early March, he and Greene spoke extensively with Channel Seven’s Spotlight program. Bol pleaded his innocence while Greene branded SIA’s investigation “embarrassing”.
“There’s been so many conspiracy theories,” Bol says. “It makes no sense. People saying I was taking it for recovery — that’s bullshit. I wasn’t even training in that period. It’s ridiculous. None of it adds up.
“SIA were expending all their resources in the wrong area. You could have spent that time and money on trying to improve your systems. If you can do that, you can be pretty happy.”
SIA and the ASDTL both had no comment when contacted on Tuesday afternoon.
Doubtless, many people will argue Bol should be happy with the recent results, especially if SIA drops its investigation.
But there are serious questions that should be answered for his peace of mind – and to ensure no athlete goes through it again.
News, results and expert analysis from the weekend of sport sent every Monday. Sign up for our Sport newsletter.
