With a view to the anti-doping fight, Tygart says in the Dlf: “Athletics is currently a role model for other sports.” For the first time, the World Championships in Athletics took place in the USA – in Eugene in the state of Oregon. The headquarters of sporting goods manufacturer Nike is also located there. This gave its name to the infamous Nike Oregon Project – a training group for top-class athletes, which had to be closed in 2019. At the time, Tygart was jointly responsible for the closure with his investigations. He said at the time: There athletes were mistreated for success. In the middle of the USA. “I think one journalist once described our efforts at the Nike Oregon Project as a sort of David versus Goliath,” Tygart recalls.
World Athletics Championships – Interview with US anti-doping chief Travis Tygart in English
Independent Anti-Doping Integrity Unit
As early as 2015, the media uncovered a major bribery and cover-up scandal in the World Athletics Federation. In view of the changes that were made at the time, Tygart is now particularly positive about the independent integrity unit (Athletics Integrity Unit AIU), which was founded in 2017 as a result of the corruption scandal. She is responsible for the anti-doping fight. She gets eight million dollars a year from the world association.
From Tygart’s point of view, this has led to a “paradigm shift”. He congratulated the current leadership in the World Athletics Association: “Sebastian Coe, who was then elected President of the World Association, took a courageous step from my point of view. Because it’s hard for sport leaders who typically want to be in control of the brand and the sport to give it up and put it in independent hands.”
At the World Championships in Eugene, his agency, USADA, is cooperating with the Athletics Integrity Unit on the drug testing program. The joint work on site is “a wonderful example of how things can work properly.”
“Anyone who tries to cheat is a fool”
Tygart believes that after many years of scandal, the tide is turning in favor of the anti-doping fight: “If this system is implemented with the will and determination to protect clean athletes in our system, then every athlete in this system, who tries to cheat is discovered.” The anti-doping programs in international athletics or national anti-doping agencies, such as the German NADA, are so good that Tygart believes: “Anyone who tries is a fool.”
When asked about the relatively few positive results from thousands of annual tests in athletics, Tygart refers to the deterrent effect of the test system on the one hand and to additional “effective investigative units” on the other.