China is sending 11 swimmers embroiled in a doping scandal to the Paris 2024 Olympics.
Among the 31-member swim roster it released Tuesday, the Chinese Swimming Association named almost a dozen swimmers who tested positive for the banned heart drug trimetazidine in 2021.
While those tests took place three years ago, the results only came to light this year, sparking international outrage both at China and the World Anti-Doping Agency. WADA said it accepted China’s explanation that the 23 swimmers who failed tests accidentally ate food contaminated with the substance, known as TMZ, which was found at “very low levels.”
The global anti-doping agency privately cleared the swimmers of wrongdoing and allowed them to compete at Tokyo 2021 — where two of them went onto win Olympic golds.
Eleven of those 23 were named Tuesday as being in the Chinese team that will compete at the Games next month.
They include Zhang Yufei, who won gold in the women’s 200 meter butterfly and 200m freestyle relay, and Wang Shun, gold medalist in the men’s 200m individual medley.
Chinese officials have vehemently denied the accusations of doping, calling them “false,” “misleading” and “defamatory.”
The ongoing saga may cast a shadow over the swimming events at Paris 2024, with critics accusing WADA of double standards. The doping agency’s clearing of China’s swimmers comes after it banned Russian figure skater Kamila Valieva, who also claimed to have been contaminated with TMZ ahead of the Beijing 2022 Winter Games.
When the positive Chinese tests emerged, Travis Tygart, CEO of the United States Anti-Doping Agency, USADA, called the news “crushing.” He said the world and Chinese anti-doping associations had “secretly, until now, swept these positives under the carpet.”
Gold-medal-winning American swimmer Katie Ledecky said in May that faith in the anti-doping system was at an “all-time low” ahead of Paris. And next week, two other American swimming greats, Michael Phelps and Allison Schmitt, are scheduled to testify on Capitol Hill at a House Energy and Commerce subcommittee hearing on anti-doping measures.
WADA “has a questionable track record,” said Committee chairs Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers, R-Wash., and Rep. Morgan Griffith, R-Va. in a joint statement. “This hearing will give members a chance to examine that track record, and ensure that the best athletes are the ones taking home gold medals,” they added.
The testing body has launched an independent review into its handling of the case, though it only did so after the story was leaked to The New York Times. It has also sent a team to China to assess its anti-doping program.
For its part, the China Anti-Doping Agency, CHINADA, has accused USADA and The New York Times of making “false accusations and misleading, defamatory reports.”
Chinada said its officials had found traces of TMZ in the hotel kitchen in the city of Shijiazhuang where the athletes were staying for the national swim meet at which swimmers tested positive. The readings were caused by “an isolated mass incident caused by athletes’ unknowing consumption of food contaminated with TMZ” and found “no fault or negligence” with any of those involved.
WADA has at the same time issued several sharp-tongued rebukes, echoing China by calling the coverage “misleading and potentially defamatory.” It said in an April statement that “the contamination scenario was plausible and that there was no concrete scientific element to challenge it.”
Last week, WADA confirmed a story in the New York Times that three of the 23 Chinese athletes had also tested positive for clenbuterol, a different performance-enhancing drug, between 2016 and 2017.
According to The Times, the three athletes are among those in China’s team for Paris, although WADA did not confirm their names.
The doping agency said the trace amounts of this drug had been “ingested through meat contamination” and called the Times story “sensationalist and inaccurate.”
