Chinese swimmers' past positive doping tests haunt Paris Olympics

Time：2024-08-01 Click：

China's Zhang Yufei competes during a heat in the women's 100-meter butterfly at the Paris Olympics on July 27. She has denied doping and said she hopes the many tests she took before the games would convince her peers.   © AP
MARRIAN ZHOU, Nikkei staff writerJuly 31, 2024 12:50 JST
NEW YORK -- A scandal over the handling of alleged doping by Chinese swimmers has flared up at the Paris Olympics, with new revelations this week.
On multiple occasions in recent years, Chinese swimmers have tested positive for banned substances. Despite the cases being blamed on food contamination, they have fanned animosity between the U.S. and China, while authorities' responses have driven a wedge between the American and global anti-doping agencies.
The New York Times on Tuesday reported that two top Chinese swimmers had tested positive for a banned performance-enhancing drug in 2022. Chinese officials provisionally suspended and investigated the athletes but eventually allowed them to compete, concluding that they probably ate tainted hamburgers in Beijing. One is on this year's Olympic team.
That was not an isolated incident. The Times in April reported that 23 Chinese swimmers had tested positive for trimetazidine (TMZ), a heart drug that can be used to boost performance, months before the Tokyo Olympics in 2021. Similarly, a Chinese investigation blamed contamination from a hotel kitchen where the swimmers had stayed. Some of those athletes went on to win medals in Tokyo, and some are competing in Paris.
The World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA), which did not make the incident public at the time, later said it had no evidence to challenge the Chinese investigation. The Chinese government, for its part, insists it has "a zero-tolerance attitude toward doping and strictly abides by the World Anti-Doping Code."
But the U.S. has launched a criminal investigation into the case of the 23 swimmers, and its Anti-Doping Agency (USADA) has essentially accused WADA of a cover-up, urging the agency to reform. The tensions only escalated on Tuesday when U.S. lawmakers threatened to cut funding for WADA.
Republican and Democratic lawmakers introduced a bill called "Restoring Confidence in the World Anti-Doping Agency Act of 2024," which would give the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP) the power to reduce or revoke U.S. financial support for the agency.
"As the largest financial contributor to WADA, the U.S. deserves to have complete confidence in WADA's ability to regulate unlawful doping so that every athlete gets a fair shot no matter their sport or country," Sen. Marsha Blackburn of Tennessee, a co-sponsor of the bill, said in a statement. The act, she said, "would make sure WADA addresses any potential conflicts of interest and properly enforces international anti-doping standards, as it was created to do."
USADA CEO Travis Tygart on Tuesday demanded transparency. "We have advocated for years that WADA change the rules on proven contamination cases to make the system fairer for athletes," Tygart said in a statement.
The same day, WADA put out its own statement acknowledging the latest revelation of the two Chinese swimmers' positive tests, and said they had been suspended for over a year.
WADA said the Chinese anti-doping agency CHINADA tested "hundreds of meat samples from various sources, with dozens revealing positive results for methandienone," the drug in question. China's doping watchdog closed the case in late 2023 without asserting a violation, which lifted the provisional suspension.
WADA said relevant international organizations "all had the opportunity to review the cases." The agency said it "thoroughly" reviewed the incident in early 2024 and concluded that there was no evidence to challenge the finding.
WADA did say that it is "generally concerned about the number of cases that are being closed without sanction when it is not possible to challenge the contamination theory." The agency also initiated an investigation earlier this year to assess circumstances of food contamination in China and other countries.
The Paris 2024 Olympic Games cauldron attached to a balloon floats with the Eiffel Tower in the background on July 29.   © Reuters
Tygart was not impressed. "Unfortunately, we learned from WADA's announcement today that they have been allowing China to operate on a special set of rules that allows them to disregard the WADA Code on transparency that the rest of the world is following," he said.
He argued that even if a positive test is caused by contamination, China is required to find violations, disqualify results and make the cases public. Tygart accused China of not following protocol and said WADA "accepted these excuses and declined to enforce its own rules."
The war of words risks not only overshadowing the Paris Games but affecting future Olympics.
WADA argues it is a victim of the broader rivalry between Washington and Beijing. "The politicization of anti-doping continues with this latest attempt by the media in the United States to imply wrongdoing on the part of WADA and the broader anti-doping community," WADA said. "As we have seen over recent months, WADA has been unfairly caught in the middle of geopolitical tensions between superpowers, but has no mandate to participate in that."
The International Olympic Committee has supported WADA and even signaled it could revoke Salt Lake City's successful 2034 Winter Games bid if the U.S. does not back off. The contract awarding the games to Utah included an amendment that allows the IOC to rescind hosting rights if WADA's authority is "not fully respected," according to media reports.
The USADA, in response, blasted the IOC. "It is shocking to see the IOC itself stooping to threats in an apparent effort to silence those seeking answers to what are now known as facts," Tygart said in a statement.
Fans cheer before the official announcement that Salt Lake City will host the 2034 Olympics. The spat between the U.S. and world anti-doping agencies has cast a shadow on the American city's Olympic bid.   © Reuters
Several swimmers competing in Paris have expressed concerns over the doping scandal.
American breaststroke specialist Lily King told AFP in June that it is "extremely frustrating for the athletes to always have in the back of our mind that maybe this sport's not fair."
Australian breaststroker Zac Stubblety-Cook told the media in Paris last week that he would consider lodging an anti-doping protest if he lost to a Chinese rival. "I absolutely believe in clean sport and I hope that this is a clean games," he said.
The Chinese athletes at the center of the scandal have mostly kept quiet. But freestyle and butterfly swimmer Zhang Yufei, one of the group of 23 who tested positive and is currently in Paris, said she rejected the doping allegations and expressed concern that others would not want to compete with her, according to the Associated Press.
Zhang said she hopes that the 20 to 30 tests she took monthly before heading to the Paris Olympics would convince her competitors that she is clean.
Some in the U.S. have also called for dialing down the tensions. Gene Sykes, the chairman of the U.S. Olympic committee, said late last week, "What we want to do is to cool the tempers and find a way for these [anti-doping] organizations to constructively work better together."