WADA Publishes List of 114 Banned Athlete Support Personnel

The World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) has published a list of athlete support personnel who have been banned from associating with athletes due to anti-doping violations.

The list contains 114 names from a host of countries, with varying degrees of punishments. Some support personnel are banned for life, others until a certain date, based on the severity of their violations.

You can view the full list here.

WADA notes that the current list does not include cases that are ongoing or under appeal.

The list is for “athlete support personnel,” which could mean anyone from a trainer to a doctor to a chiropractor to a nutritionist.

None of the names appear to have any obvious swimming connections. The most recent high-profile case of a ban involving swimming support personnel was Ba Zhen, the doctor to China’s world record-holding distance man Sun Yang. 

Sun was suspended for a doping test that showed levels of Trimetazidine, a prescription drug that had only been added to WADA’s banned list a few months earlier. Sun got off with a relatively light 3-month suspension, while his doctor Ba was suspended for a full year.

But FINA announced this past spring that Ba had violated his suspension by traveling to the Asian Games in Korea and treating Sun during the meet. As a result, FINA lengthened the doctor’s suspension, which will end later this month.

Ba was suspended by FINA, and does not appear on the WADA list.