WADA stands by decision to clear Chinese swimmers at Tokyo Olympics

GENEVA (AP):

The World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) said that after reviewing various media reports, it stands by its decision to clear 23 Chinese swimmers who tested positive for a banned heart medication before the 2021 Tokyo Olympics.

WADA addressed questions at a news conference yesterday and acknowledged there would be scepticism about details of the case after the release on Sunday of a documentary by German broadcaster ARD.

In an earlier statement following initial newspaper reports, led by The New York Times, WADA said it agreed with Chinese authorities and ruled that the swimmers’ samples were contaminated.

The contamination was accepted to have come from spice containers in the kitchen of a hotel where some of the Chinese team stayed for a national meet in January 2021.

Chinese authorities handling the case after testing the swimmers in January 2021, cleared them without any penalties and WADA accepted their conclusions. Sending independent investigators to China that year was not feasible during the COVID-19 pandemic.

“We had no credible way to disprove the contamination theory,” WADA prosecutor Ross Wenzel told reporters in an online call yesterday, adding there was no political pressure to drop the case.

Wenzel detailed a timeline from January to June 2021 for the case to be resolved. That was just weeks before the Tokyo Olympics opened, and with the Beijing Winter Games approaching in February 2022 that was a personal project for Chinese President Xi Jinping.

Chinese swimmers went on to win three gold medals in Tokyo, where the United States took silver in two of those races and Britain were second in the other.

“Following WADA’s review of the documentary, the agency still stands firmly by the results of its scientific investigation and legal decision concerning the case,” WADA said in the statement before putting forward its senior managers up for questioning yesterday.

WADA said based on available scientific evidence and intelligence, “which was gathered, assessed and tested by experts in the pharmacology of trimetazidine (TMZ); and, by anti-doping experts,” it had no basis under the global anti-doping code to challenge the Chinese agency’s findings of environmental contamination.

The drug at the centre of this case was also the medication that led to the suspension of Russian figure skater Kamila Valieva at the Winter Olympics in Beijing in 2022.

In that case, WADA moved to appeal and sought sanctions for Valieva after Russian anti-doping authorities judged she was not to blame.

China’s star swimmer Sun Yang also tested positive for TMZ and served a three-month ban in 2014. That case also was kept quiet by Chinese and swim authorities and provoked criticism from opponents when he won at the World Championships the next year. Sun was later banned for breaking doping rules in a high-profile case WADA did pursue.

Dismissing weekend suggestions that WADA was “soft on Chinese athletes”, agency president Witold Bańka reminded reporters it had been “vigorously pursuing justice” in the Sun case. A ban of more than four years for three-time Olympic champion Sun expires next month.

WADA said its position in the latest Chinese case was also accepted by World Aquatics, which governs international swimming.