Also last year, an American sprinter borrowed training sleeves from a friend to wear over an injured hamstring. The sleeves contained a banned substance. After an investigation concluded the sprinter shouldn’t be penalized, the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency announced the positive test anyway.
In 2020, an American boxer tested positive for two banned substances that her partner was taking. An investigation determined the drugs entered her system through sex. She was exonerated in time to compete in the Tokyo Olympics the following summer. The positive tests still were disclosed.
“As it stands, the WADA rules dictate that even if a positive test is proven to be caused by contamination, national anti-doping agencies must find a violation, disqualify results, and make a public announcement,” USADA CEO Travis Tygart said in a statement issued Tuesday night.
Which gets us to the Paris Olympics. And the Chinese swimmers who tested positive for banned substances three years ago. And the results that weren’t announced.
There is all-out war between two agencies that are supposed to pull on the same end of the rope. It’s not going away. If anything, it’s escalating.
“The politicization of Chinese swimming 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 in a lengthy statement issued Tuesday. “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.”
Ya’ gotta feel for them, don’t ya’?
The story has not stopped the Olympic swim meet in its tracks, not hardly. That’s largely because the Chinese swimmers have been held off the top of the podium — so the anthem hasn’t once filled La Defense Arena. After winning 10 golds in Tokyo — second behind the United States’ 12 — and 20 medals overall, China has just two silvers and two bronzes here as the meet approaches its midpoint.
On Tuesday night, Qin Haiyang — the reigning world champion in both the men’s 100- and 200-meter breaststrokes — failed to reach the final of the latter event, in which he holds the world record. This after he finished seventh in the 100 earlier in the meet. Wednesday morning, Xu Jiayu, who won one of China’s silvers in the 100 backstroke, failed to even show up for his heat in the 200 back. No immediate reason was given.
It’s dangerous to consider those results and actions and conclude, “The Chinese must be missing something they relied on in Tokyo.” But WADA’s combination of inaction and secrecy has only bolstered such speculation.
Forget the “politicization of Chinese swimming.” This is a mess of WADA’s own making. And it’s important to clean it up — not just for the Paris Games, but for faith in the global system to ensure clean international competition going forward.
The American media WADA refers to is the New York Times, which reported earlier Tuesday that two more Chinese swimmers had tested positive for banned substances — in this case, a hardcore steroid — but blamed it on contaminated meat. (One of those swimmers is on the Olympic team here.) But it also could and should include the German outlet ARD, which with the Times reported in April that 23 Chinese swimmers tested positive for the banned heart medication trimetazidine leading up to the Tokyo Olympics in 2021 and that Chinese anti-doping authorities blamed on contamination in a hotel kitchen, an explanation that WADA accepted but didn’t announce. Last week, ARD further reported that those swimmers didn’t all stay at the same hotel.
“A fundamental question at the heart of any claimed contamination case, which WADA refuses to answer in these cases, is what was the source of the positives?” Tygart’s latest statement said. “The fact that WADA accepted these excuses and declined to enforce its own rules is a failure of the system.”
All this led to saber-rattling across the Atlantic. On Tuesday, a bipartisan congressional delegation announced legislation that would withhold the United States’ contribution to WADA’s budget — a $3.4 million contribution to a roughly $50 million annual budget.
The swept-under-the-rug Chinese positives could make WADA seem toothless. And to the athletes who swam in Tokyo and are competing here against 11 of those swimmers, it is — regardless of China’s poor performance in the pool thus far.
But tell that to the scores of athletes WADA has suspended over the years, even those who have claimed inadvertent ingestion. There’s Shelby Houlihan, the American record-holder in the women’s 1,500 meters who is missing her second Olympics after a positive test for the steroid nandrolone — that she blamed on a tainted burrito. There’s Issam Asinga, the Surinamese sprinter who set American high school records but is serving a four-year ban after testing positive for the banned substance GW1516, which alters how the body metabolizes fat. Isinga is suing Gatorade, which he says supplied him tainted gummies that were supposed to help with recovery.
Whether you believe Houlihan or Asinga, they’re not here because WADA said they can’t be.
“I just think this idea that somehow they’re soft on doping is unfair,” said Paul Greene, an American attorney who has represented athletes in doping cases for two decades. “I know from my years and years of dealing with them, if anything, they’re rigid.”
What they are is inconsistent, and the reaction — particularly in the United States or from American athletes and observers — risks being horribly xenophobic. You can’t say, “Poor kid from Suriname, he should be here,” and follow it reflexively with, “We’re not going to fund you unless you suspend the Chinese.”
But WADA also needs to admit that it didn’t handle the China cases properly. Beyond that, both WADA and the International Olympic Committee need to understand that the timing of the unpublicized positives — less than a year in advance of the Beijing Winter Games — makes the optics awful, quietly clearing athletes from one of the few countries eager to host future Olympics.
Beyond that, the IOC must understand the threats it is making to yank the 2034 Winter Games from Salt Lake City unless Americans bow to WADA as the “supreme authority” on all things doping are laughable. Where else would they turn? Beyond that, WADA must come to the conclusion that its blended relationship with the IOC — half of the budget comes from countries around the world, the other half from the IOC — cripples its ability to police doping as an independent agency.
American outcry is not the reason WADA’s structure is flawed and its actions open to suspicion. Both problems are solvable, but only if both the IOC and WADA understand that public perception matters when it comes to faith. And without faith in the system, who can be confident the competition is clean?
