MELBOURNE, Australia — Few professional runners become household names. But in Australia, Peter Bol, a middle-distance runner of Sudanese descent, is something of a national hero.
At the Tokyo Olympics, where he was the first Australian man in 53 years to compete in the 800-meter Olympic final, he hurtled into his compatriots’ hearts after he placed fourth in a nail-biter race.
“I didn’t know if I was going to win, but I knew one thing for certain — that the whole of Australia was watching,” he told reporters in 2021. “That carried me on.”
This year, Australian eyes are again on Mr. Bol — but for less desirable reasons.
Last month, news broke that he faced a suspension from training after a sample of his urine tested positive for synthetic erythropoietin, or EPO, according to Australia’s antidoping agency. The drug, a banned blood booster that helps promote endurance, has led to suspensions for other now-discredited athletes, including runners, biathletes and the disgraced American cyclist Lance Armstrong.
Weeks later, after receiving the results from the test of his “B sample” — the second part of the original sample, used to verify the accuracy of the first, or A sample — Mr. Bol says his innocence has now been proven. The antidoping agency, calling the result “atypical,” said it has not.
The episode has raised questions not only about Mr. Bol’s integrity, but also when and how officials should go public with accusations of drug use. Internationally, it has resurrected debate about the accuracy of EPO testing, which critics call alarmingly open to human error.
On Jan. 10, when antidoping officials came to Mr. Bol’s home in Melbourne to inform him of his suspension, he hoped that the allegations might never become public.
His lawyer, Paul Greene, begged the antidoping agency, Sports Integrity Australia, to keep the suspension under wraps until testing on his B sample had been completed. Mr. Bol, 30, had a squeaky-clean reputation and a high public profile, and he maintained his innocence, Mr. Greene said.
He was a finalist for Young Australian of the Year, a prestigious national prize that would be awarded later that month, and they feared that the suspicion of doping could harm his chances, he added.
At first, the agency agreed, Mr. Greene said. “‘If his B doesn’t confirm his A, he’ll keep this confidential, nobody will ever know,’ and that’s the way it should be.” Elsewhere in the world, he added, an athlete would seldom, if ever, be suspended until both samples had been analyzed.
Days later, the agency told Mr. Greene the information had somehow become public, he said, and they felt compelled to formally announce the suspension. Mr. Greene said that he struggled to understand how the information had come to light.
Allegations of doping in sports are hardly news — nor are vehement protestations of innocence by accused athletes. But to Australians, it was a bombshell.
In Mr. Bol’s easy manner and laid-back charisma, they had seen someone to root for: the champion runner who had fallen into the sport as an extra contestant in a school 400-meter race. Others applauded his sporting prowess: On his path to the Olympic final, Mr. Bol had breezed past two national records. And still more were inspired by his back story. Mr. Bol’s family fled to Egypt from violence in Sudan when he was a small child, before coming to Australia on humanitarian visas.
When the allegations become public, Mr. Bol called for patience and swore that he had never taken EPO or any other prohibited substance. “I am innocent and have not taken this substance as I am accused,” he wrote on Instagram. Mr. Bol did not respond to requests for comment.
In attesting his innocence, Mr. Bol’s team has pointed to the athlete’s upstanding record, distaste for needles and overall good character. But there are also practical and financial reasons he is unlikely to have doped, especially before receiving sponsorship from Adidas and Longines, said Justin Rinaldi, Mr. Bol’s coach, who receives no payment.
Until the Olympics, Mr. Bol never earned more than $20,000 a year from running, paying for all related costs himself, Mr. Rinaldi said. “It’s not glamorous.” Few could afford performance drugs, particularly as part of a structured program of doping, he added. “It’s not something that’s feasible in our sport, particularly here in Australia.”
The drug Mr. Bol is accused of having used is near-identical to a molecule found naturally in the body that stimulates the production of red blood cells. The test for it yields columns of black streaks of varying thicknesses and densities.
Antidoping agencies typically analyze the results from those tests using the human eye, a worryingly fallible method, said Erik Boye, a Norwegian scientist. Along with fellow professors of biochemistry and molecular biology in Oslo, he has long been calling for a change in how these tests are conducted.
“There are scientific methods whereby you can measure exactly the density in the profile that you’re analyzing,” he said. “You can have a machine do it. And then the answer is obvious.”
In the early 2010s, Dr. Boye and his colleagues sought to rally support within the scientific community for such machine analysis. At first, they attracted signatories from significant colleagues, including Werner Franke, who exposed details of East Germany’s state-sponsored athlete doping program, and Peter Agre, who won the Nobel Prize for Chemistry in 2003.
But these efforts were scorned by antidoping agencies, who said that they were highly experienced in analyzing the tests and would not change their methods.
Eventually, Dr. Boye said, the fight began to feel unwinnable. “It’s just so unfair,” he said. “You think that antidoping is a worthy, glorious undertaking, but it’s not, unfortunately.”
Last week, Mr. Bol published another statement on Instagram — this time, with a note of euphoria. He would return to training, he said, after receiving the test results from his B sample. “I was hopeful the process would exonerate me,” he wrote on Feb. 14. “I am relieved to report that it did.”
But a statement from Sports Integrity Australia, which has said it intends to interview Mr. Bol in the coming weeks, was more foreboding.
Yes, Mr. Bol could return to training. Yes, the B sample did not confirm the A sample. However, “an atypical finding is not the same as a negative test result,” the statement read, stressing that further investigation would be needed.
Sports Integrity Australia didn’t respond to requests for an interview.
Mr. Bol and his team said they hoped to learn what had happened. He plans to see a kidney specialist, his coach said. Since Jan. 14, they have been waiting to receive the full lab report, at a cost to Mr. Bol of more than 1,200 Australian dollars. So far, they have only the initial one-page summary and an accompanying letter.
“My guess is that we will never see any results,” said Dr. Boye, the scientist.
He added: “They will never reveal anything that could discredit them. They will say ‘nothing found, case closed.’” And the process would leave Mr. Bol “shattered,” he added, “at least for a few months.”
