Chinese swimmers’ Olympics doping scandal demands answers, not evasion

At issue is the fallout from WADA’s handling of positive drug tests for 23 Chinese swimmers seven months before 2020 Tokyo Games (held in 2021 because of the coronavirus0. WADA cleared the athletes to compete despite the positive tests; several went on to win medals, including three golds. Eleven of the 23 who tested positive for those Games are participating in Paris now.

There might have been punishment for China’s swimmers in 2021 and after, but WADA failed to disclose the positive tests when they occurred, contrary to standard procedure. The world knows about the test results only because, in April of this year, the New York Times and German broadcaster ARD broke the story. The 23 swimmers’ urine samples had shown traces of trimetazidine, or TMZ, a prescription heart medication banned as a performance-enhancing drug because it can increase stamina in elite athletes. They were cleared to compete because WADA seemed to accept the Chinese anti-doping agency’s claim that small traces of TMZ had been found in the kitchen of a hotel where the swimmers had stayed during a domestic swim meet. The Chinese authorities said the swimmers had inadvertently ingested TMZ from hotel food.

Several independent experts have questioned that account, pointing out areas for further investigation. How did trace amounts of the banned drug — which is prescribed as a solid pill rather than a powder or liquid — end up in a hotel kitchen? Was the kitchen contamination contained? Unfortunately, WADA never demanded answers to those elementary questions from Chinese authorities and buried the entire episode.

WADA’s response to the reports by the Times and ARD has been haughty defensiveness. Agency officials expressed outrage not at the possibility of impropriety, but at the media for reporting on it. They have tried to play the victim, claiming to be collateral damage in geopolitical conflict between Washington and Beijing. Worse, they have resorted to threats and blackmail, vowing alongside the International Olympic Committee to strip Salt Lake City of the 2034 Winter Games unless the United States stops probing this growing doping scandal.

This is unacceptable for an agency that international athletics counts on to keep competition drug-free. It’s doubly unacceptable for an agency that the United States funds to the tune of $3.7 million annually — the biggest contribution from any country.

A bipartisan congressional group has proposed a bill that would empower the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy to withhold funding if WADA does not provide more transparency and reform its governance and procedures. That bill led to the bizarre threat by the IOC, which awarded the Winter Games to Salt Lake City on the condition that the United States respect the “supreme authority” of WADA on anti-doping matters and that U.S. organizers lobby to undo a 2020 law that empowers the Justice Department to prosecute sports doping cases, wherever in the world they occur. Which leaves one to wonder: What are Olympics officials and WADA trying to hide?

New revelations reported by the Times just after the Paris Games opened showed that two more Chinese swimmers, including one member of the current squad who won a bronze medal in a freestyle relay on July 28, had tested positive in 2022 for a different banned drug, the anabolic steroid metandienone, also known as Dianabol or D-Bol. As with the 23 positive tests before the Tokyo Olympics, these were not made public by WADA when they occurred. China’s anti-doping agency cleared the two swimmers after a brief provisional suspension and an internal investigation, which concluded — implausibly — that it was likely another case of inadvertent food contamination, this time from hamburgers served at a McDonald’s near the team’s training facility. WADA accepted that explanation.

The indulgence of China contrasts sharply with the agency’s tough stand on Russia after revelations of a sweeping state-sponsored doping scheme in 2019. WADA banned Russia from international sports for four years (later controversially reduced to two). Russia’s name, flag and anthem were disallowed at the Tokyo Games, although “clean” individual athletes were allowed to compete. What accounts for the different treatment?

American Katie Ledecky and other swimmers have voiced suspicions about their Chinese counterparts in the pool. Chinese athletes and their supporters on social media respond that they are being unfairly targeted. Indeed, protecting individual Chinese swimmers from possible false accusations is yet another reason WADA owes the world a full, accurate accounting. WADA created this mess; only WADA can clean it up.