The 2023 Hungarian National Championships began today but one Olympian is not listed among the competitors.
26-year-old Olympic medalist Tamas Kenderesi is absent from the start lists and stated today that this is due to two primary factors. One is his having to deal with chronic shoulder pain and the other is due to a pending alleged doping violation involving his biological passport.
According to the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA), ‘the fundamental principle of the Athlete Biological Passport (ABP) is to monitor selected biological variables over time that indirectly reveal the effects of doping, rather than attempting to detect the doping substance or method itself.’
Kenderesi’s statement to SzPressz News Service describes that his disputed blood sample stems from a blood donation that took place in April of 2022.
“The evening after the blood donation, doping inspectors came to our apartment and took a blood sample. I clearly stated on the doping control sheet that I had donated 450 ml of blood the previous day (blood loss).
“However, when the blood sample was processed, they did not record blood donation on the Hematologica data sheet, but mistakenly recorded blood transfusion, which also erroneously affected my biological passport.
“Based on this, WADA‘s Austrian expert initiated an investigation in which some of the previously unobjectionable blood samples (mainly in 2017, i.e. some of my results, which were already taken and rigorously checked 5 years earlier) were later classified as objectionable and abnormal without re-analysis.
“Of the 11 blood samples taken in 2017, three were classified as invalid, I don’t know for what reason. Another three were transported to foreign laboratories in serious violation of cooling regulations, even in the 39-degree summer heat. In addition, a sample was taken during training, ignoring the requirements of the relevant regulations.”
The chapter on atypical passports of WADA‘s results management regulations stipulates: “2.1. 7.1 If there is a deviation from WADA‘s Athlete Biological Passport requirements for sample collection, transport and analysis, the biomarker result obtained from this sample affected by non-compliance cannot be taken into account in the adaptive model calculations (for example, under certain transport conditions, RET may be affected, while the HGB does not).”
According to Index.Hu, three independent foreign analytical experts are now reviewing Kenderesi’s data and will submit their findings to the Hungarian anti-doping authorities who will then make an ultimate decision on the swimmer’s outcome.
Kenderesi told SzPressz News Service, “I am convinced that in the process my innocence will be confirmed. I have never used a prohibited substance, a prohibited method, and I have not committed a doping violation.
“Blood and urine samples were taken 48 times and 51 times for doping control purposes. All were found to be fine. They have never, not once, found a prohibited substance, substance residue, or method in my body.”
Kenderesi, who claimed 200m fly bronze at the 2016 Olympic Games, says he will use all legal options to prove that the doping accusation against him is based on a false assumption, for the sake of himself and his fellow athletes. He also says his innocence will ultimately refute the infallibility of WADA‘s biological passport system.
Kenderesi says he has not been able to do a full workout for 6 months.
More statistical and detailed data is included in the Index.Hu article here.
The biological passport program has caught some not small names in Athletics / Track and field over the last few years. Like anything WADA does it’s by no means perfect, but it’s definitely made life harder for cheaters. I do not know of any cases which have called into question the metrics WADA uses for producing false positives, in fact the biological passport has received a lot of scrutiny for exactly the opposite reasons with many suspecting it hasn’t been very effective in catch blood dopers and what not.
Being a fan of Athletics as well I’m not inclined to give Kenderesi the benefit of the doubt here, but I guess we’ll see how this plays out.
Passport doping???
There’s definitely a Santo joke in there somewhere! 😅
And – unsurprisingly – the comment of the week is once again awarded to a comment related to santo. Congratulations!
“Sorry santo looks like you have 3 countries on your credentials and are qualified in 3 different events for those 3 countries. You can’t represent 3 countries in 3 different events that you qualified in! You can only pick one! So we’re just gonna invalidate your passport and you can try again next time.”
-IOC at some point
Passport doping?
👎🏼📉☠️
Please explain to me like I’m an 8-year-old.
WADA bad at job
they took samples, he tries to say blood donation makes it more concerated as he has lost in overall blood volume. I do not think he is right. Passport is for the reason to see how ones blood “picture” change in longer time frame as it is hard to notice some drugs straight but anomalies in longer timelines show use.
He is wrong. Some people have a medical condition that causes their hematocrit to be too high. Part of the treatment is to remove blood to bring their hematocrit down.
ChatGPT did it for me:
Tamas Kenderesi is a swimmer from Hungary who won a bronze medal in the Olympics in 2016. He was supposed to compete in a swimming competition, but he is not there because he is dealing with a shoulder injury and an alleged doping violation. Doping is when athletes use drugs or other substances to cheat and make themselves stronger.
The World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) uses something called a biological passport to check if athletes have been cheating. It looks at different things in the athlete’s blood over time to see if there are any signs of doping. Kenderesi says that his blood was checked after he donated blood, but the people who checked… Read more »
Tamas Kenderesi is a swimmer from Hungary who won a bronze medal in the Olympics in 2016. He was supposed to compete in a swimming competition, but he is not there because he is dealing with a shoulder injury and an alleged doping violation. Doping is when athletes use drugs or other substances to cheat and make themselves stronger.
The World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) uses something called a biological passport to check if athletes have been cheating. It looks at different things in the athlete’s blood over time to see if there are any signs of doping. Kenderesi says that his blood was checked after he donated blood, but the people who checked it made a mistake and thought… Read more »
Okay, so there’s a big swimming competition happening in Hungary right now. But there’s one really good swimmer, Tamas Kenderesi, who isn’t there. He’s not competing for two reasons: one, his shoulder hurts, and two, there’s a problem with some of his blood tests that people use to make sure he’s not cheating by using drugs to swim faster.
Tamas says the problem happened because he gave some of his blood to help people who needed it, but when they did the test later, they didn’t know he had given blood and thought something was wrong. Now, some experts are looking at his test results to figure out if everything is okay or not. Tamas is sure that he… Read more »
Biological passport=doping monitoring program that looks for changes in certain measures instead of trying to detect the actual drug. There are inconsistencies in his biological passport but also it seems there are issues with the storage and transport that could have caused the issues. There are current investigations to determine whether he is in trouble or not.
He donated blood (hopefully he has documentation of this, and I assume it was a whole blood donation) and the next day WADA came by to take blood as well. The day after a blood donation red cell counts are lower, specifically hemoglobin and hematocrit. The body hasn’t had time to make more red blood cells, so fluid quickly shifts into circulation to ensure there’s enough blood volume in the meantime. Therefore the hemoglobin concentration is lower on lab work (there’s less hemoglobin but the same overall blood volume)
WADA compared his hemoglobin value to previous blood samples and saw that it was higher in 2017 compared to the 2022 sample. Abnormally high or fluctuating hemoglobin is a possible sign… Read more »
I assume this is the high level Hungarian flyer we speculated about
Yes.
Sounds like a nightmare to try to prove your innocence in this case.
This is a new one to me. Not the traditional “tested positive for substance X” etc.
I normally roll my eyes at excuses but in this scenario I am so far siding with the athlete. Curious to see where this goes.
Agree I don’t have too well of an understanding about this type of situation but also sounds like Kenderesi has kept a pretty well detailed record of what happened and there was a mistake made on the part of the testers.
Bio passports were introduced primarily to combat EPO use in cycling, where it was common for cyclists to focus on one event (usually the Tour de France), dope on training camps, then come off the EPO for the event with transfusions of blood taken on the camp used to maintain haemocratit levels without actually doping during the event. Basically, what Lance Armstrong perfected. The focus on one big meet would make this an effective method of doping in swimming, but it is very expensive.
Kenderesi seems to have been mute likely victim of a cock up sadly.
Very helpful. Thank you!