As geopolitical tensions between the United States and China spilled onto the Olympic stage, the World Anti-Doping Agency (Wada) said it had been “unfairly caught in the middle” of the conflict between the two countries.
China’s swimmers have been in the spotlight after a series of doping allegations, followed by controversial US claims that Wada covered them up.
Chinese swimmers travelling to Paris were subjected to twice as many doping tests as some other countries, fuelling accusations of a conspiracy to hinder their performance.
Wada said on Tuesday that it was “caught in the middle of geopolitical tensions between superpowers, but has no mandate to get involved”.
James Fitzgerald, Wada’s head of media relations, told the BBC: “Some people [in the US] are trying to score political points simply because the athletes in question are Chinese. As a result, it has created mistrust and division within the anti-doping system,” Fitzgerald told the BBC.
Last week, Wada said it was considering legal action against its US counterpart Usada over the “defamatory” allegations.
Usada had accused Wada and China’s anti-doping agency Chinada of being among the “dirty hands that covered up positive tests and silenced the voices of brave whistleblowers”.
Members of the US Congress have also accused Wada of failing to properly investigate doping allegations against Chinese swimmers, and last Tuesday even introduced a bill to authorise the White House to cut the agency’s funding.
“When congressmen and senators get involved in the largely technical world of anti-doping, it ceases to be a scientific and legal analysis and moves into the political realm,” Fitzgerald said.
Tainted food and supplements the real culprit
Wada’s announcement on Tuesday followed a New York Times report on a previously undisclosed case in which two Chinese swimmers, one of whom was on this year’s Olympic team, were being investigated for doping.
The two swimmers had tested positive for a banned steroid in 2022, but were allowed to compete. China’s anti-doping agency concluded that the athletes had unknowingly consumed steroids, possibly by eating contaminated hamburgers.
Usada accused Wada of “tilting the field in their favour by allowing China to compete under a different set of rules”. But Wada defended its decision.
Wada said the athletes’ supplements and hair tests had returned negative results and that both swimmers had given control samples that tested negative in the days before and after the positive test. He added that the two swimmers had been suspended for more than a year and that their cases had been closed.
“Judging by the number of cases, it is clear that there is a contamination problem in different countries around the world,” the agency said, adding that the two athletes’ cases were part of a “wider series of cases involving [Chinese] athletes from different sports”.
Wada said in June that athletes who eat meat sometimes test positive for drugs if they take clenbuterol, a banned substance used as a growth promoter for livestock.
The agency is investigating cases of contamination in China as well as Mexico, Guatemala and other countries, it said in response to questions from The New York Times.
The head of the agency, Olivier Niggli, said at the time that the US media “only asked about China when meat contamination is a problem in many countries” and referred to “attempts to politicise the fight against doping”.
US swimming champion Katie Ledecky also weighed in on the debate
All this follows a bigger controversy in April, when the New York Times reported that 23 Chinese swimmers had tested positive for performance-enhancing drugs months before the Tokyo 2021 Olympics.
But they were allowed to compete after Chinese authorities said the results were due to contamination. The 30-strong team won six medals in Tokyo, including three gold.
Eleven of those who tested positive were selected for the Chinese swimming team for the Paris Olympics.
But US swimmer and 11-time Olympic medallist Katie Ledecky said her confidence in anti-doping authorities was at an “all-time low” after the news of the 23 Chinese swimmers.
Independent investigation backs Wada
But Wada’s investigation found that the source of the heart drug trimetazidine (TMZ) was “unable to refute the possibility of contamination”.
The report said the contamination theory was supported by the “consistently low concentrations of TMZ as well as the absence of a doping pattern” among the athletes tested.
That is, test results over several days were not consistent, fluctuating between negative and positive.
An independent investigation found that Wada had not mishandled the case or favoured the Chinese swimmers.
Chinese swimmers tested more than usual
Scandals have piled pressure on anti-doping authorities, and the Chinese swim team was subjected to far more tests than usual when it arrived in Paris.
Since January, each of the 31 members of the team has been tested an average of 21 times by various anti-doping organisations, according to World Aquatics, which oversees swimming.
By contrast, Australia’s 41 swimmers have been tested an average of four times and the USA’s 46 swimmers an average of six times.
The testing inflation has led to a number of other allegations. The Global Times, which is close to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), accused Western powers of “abusing doping tests to disrupt the [Chinese] swimming team”.
Speaking to the Global Times, a professor of international politics in Shanghai accused the US of dominating anti-doping rules.
Shen Yi claimed that “cruel and unethical testing” had disrupted the Chinese team’s training and called it “a disgrace to the Olympics”.
Chinese record swimmer: Our performance is threatened
Chinese swimmer Qin Haiyang, who holds the world record in the men’s 200m breaststroke, said the constant testing “proves that the European and American teams feel threatened by the Chinese team’s performances in recent years”.
“Some tricks are aimed at disrupting our preparation rhythm and destroying our psychological defences. But we are not afraid,” he said.
Qin, who won gold medals in the 50m, 100m and 200m breaststroke at last year’s World Championships, finished seventh in the men’s 100m breaststroke final at the Paris Olympics.
The criticism was echoed by former Chinese diving champion Gao Min, who said the rigorous testing had “corrupted the Chinese swimming team” and described Qin’s performance as “the worst in any competition in the past two years”.
China’s current medal tally is one gold, two silvers and two bronzes.
China’s “butterfly queen” Zhang Yufei, who won silver in the 100 metres in Tokyo, was in tears over her bronze medal in Paris but said the doping tests had not had a major impact on her.
Although the tests were “a bit annoying”, Zhang Yufei said the real pressure was “much greater” than she had imagined.
