Article 2.4 of the World Anti-Doping Code is the only violation in the Code that an athlete can commit without anything ever being found in a sample. It is also the one most often summarised incorrectly, because the summary drops the two words that do the work: any combination.
What counts
Two different failures sit inside the same count:
- A filing failure — the whereabouts information was not filed, or was filed so inaccurately that the athlete could not be found.
- A missed test — the athlete was not available at the declared place during the declared sixty-minute slot.
Three of either, in any mixture, inside twelve months, is the violation. Two filing failures and one missed test is three. One filing failure and two missed tests is three. There is no separate allowance for each kind.
Where the twelve months start
The period runs from the first of the failures, not from the anniversary of entering the testing pool, not from the start of the calendar year, and not from the quarter in which the failure happened. A failure in March and two in the following February are three inside twelve months. The same three spread across fourteen months are not.
Why this is the arithmetic people get wrong
Because a rolling window makes the third failure dangerous at a moving point in time. An athlete who has one failure on record is not carrying it for a fixed season; the exposure expires twelve months after that specific date. Teams that track this properly track dates, not counts, and the quarterly filing deadline described in the entry on the 2027 Code is part of the same calendar: a filing submitted late is already one of the three.
What follows a third failure
A violation under article 2.4 is not treated as a presumed positive test. It carries its own sanction range, and the period may be reduced according to the athlete's degree of fault. If a provisional suspension is imposed while the case runs, the time served under it can be credited against the final period — but only on the conditions set out in article 10.13.2, and only if the suspension was actually respected.
The practical reading
Whereabouts rules are not an accusation. They are an availability obligation attached to being in a registered testing pool, and the Code treats them as administrative duties with a hard edge. The hard edge is the rolling twelve months, and it is why the first failure — usually a clerical one — is the one worth taking seriously.
Where this is written: article 2.4 of the World Anti-Doping Code and the International Standard for Testing and Investigations, wada-ama.org/en/resources.