The World Anti-Doping Agency is a foundation created through a collective initiative led by the national governments of over 140 countries along with the International Olympic Committee (IOC).

[15] The statutes of WADA and the World Anti-Doping Code mandate the Court of Arbitration for Sport's ultimate jurisdiction in deciding doping-related cases.

[19] The Nominations Committee was created in September 2019 in order to ensure that the right people are recruited to serve in senior governance roles within the organisation.

Other independent members appointed are German human resources expert Regine Buettner and British business executive Simon Gillham.

Following the review process, stakeholders were invited to intervene publicly on the proposed Code and Standards during the Agency's Fifth World Conference on Doping in Sport in Katowice, Poland – an opportunity which was taken up by over 70 stakeholder organisations – before the Code and the full suite of Standards were approved by the Foundation Board and executive committee respectively.

[36][non-primary source needed] Professor Donald A. Berry has said that the closed systems used by anti-doping agencies do not allow statistical validation of the tests.

[39] There has been at least one case where the development of statistical decision limit used by WADA in HGH use testing was found invalid by the Court of Arbitration for Sport.

In justification, the Doping Control Assistant (DCA) in charge of the testing mission was later criticised by Sun Yang, Chinese media, journalists, and scholars for not following the proper protocols.

[42] A three-member CAS panel found Sun guilty of refusing to co-operate with sample testers and banned him from competitive swimming until February 2028.

WADA ultimately concluded that it was not in a position to disprove the possibility that contamination was the source of TMZ and it was compatible with the analytical data in the file.

[47] The New York Times subsequently obtained a copy of CHINADA and the Ministry of Public Security's research, with experts characterizing explanations as being based on simplistic human trials that did not prove how the contamination occurred.

WADA's choice of Swiss attorney Eric Cottier to lead an investigation into the matter also drew criticism because he was hand-picked by the agency.

[49] Experts interviewed by The New York Times said trace amounts of TMZ can be detected near the end of a doping excretion period but could not rule out contamination either.

[50] WADA was also accused of having a double-standard as Russian figure skater Kamila Valieva tested positive for TMZ and used the same excuse, but was subsequently banned for four years.

[53][54] WADA said it asked USADA to produce the whistleblowers alleging doping by the Chinese but has received no response, adding that American athletes had "some of the most elaborate and surprising contamination scenarios" in the past.

[61] The agreement was signed off by the United States Olympic & Paralympic Committee (USOPC) and Salt Lake City officials but criticized by USADA.

[62] British swimmer Adam Peaty, who competed at the 2024 Summer Olympics, also expressed dissatisfaction with the World Anti-Doping Agency's efforts to combat cheating in sports.

[64] In September 2024, Swiss prosecutor Eric Cottier, who was picked by WADA to investigate the case of the 23 Chinese swimmers, released his final report noting that some rules were not followed by CHINADA but this did not affect the "acceptance of the contamination hypothesis".

[70] Following the report, WADA stated that USADA allowed at least three athletes who had violated anti-doping rules to continue competing for years in exchange for their serving as undercover agents to identify other dopers.

[77] In August 2016, the World Anti-Doping Agency reported the receipt of phishing emails sent to users of its database claiming to be official WADA communications requesting their login details.

After reviewing the two domains provided by WADA, it was found that the websites' registration and hosting information were consistent with the Russian hacking group Fancy Bear.

Analysts said they believed the hack was in part an act of retaliation against whistleblowing Russian athlete Yuliya Stepanova, whose personal information was released in the breach.

[81] The hackers then used the website fancybear.net to leak what they said were the Olympic drug testing files of several American athletes who had received therapeutic use exemptions, including gymnast Simone Biles for methylphenidate, tennis players Venus Williams (for prednisone, prednisolone, triamcinolone, and formoterol), and Serena Williams (for oxycodone, hydromorphone, prednisone, prednisolone, and methylprednisolone), and basketball player Elena Delle Donne (for an amphetamine and hydrocortisone).

[81] The Anti-Doping Convention of the Council of Europe in Strasbourg was opened for signature on 16 December 1989 as the first multilateral legal standard in this field.