In the first days of 2021, seven months before the pandemic-delayed Tokyo Olympics, 23 of China's best swimmers tested positive for the same banned substance at a domestic competition.
China's anti-doping authorities investigated the incident and found that the heart drug trimetazidine, known as TMZ, was present in the kitchen of the hotel where the swimmers were staying for a year-end New Year event. It was announced that this is thought to be the cause. December 2020 and early January 2021.
The World Anti-Doping Agency, the global authority that oversees countries' drug testing programs, investigated the episode but later accepted the theory and allowed China to keep the results secret.
All the while, swimmers were allowed to continue racing without suspension or disqualification. Some of the swimmers who provided positive samples qualified for the Olympics and won medals for China, including three gold medals. There are several athletes who are favorites to win this year's Paris Olympics.
Unless the details of one of swimming's strangest episodes are revealed from the sealed files of the organization trusted to uphold the integrity of the sport, the case will remain shrouded in darkness and a select few. It would have been a secret that only he knew.
Here are six takeaways from our report.
The Chinese-led investigation left important questions unanswered.
The global anti-doping system functions as an honor system. Major countries have a responsibility to ensure their athletes are clean and must trust that other countries will do the same. So it was up to China's doping control authority, known as Chinada, to investigate when 23 athletes tested positive for the same drug at the same tournament in the country.
China assured global regulators that it had gone to extraordinary lengths to investigate. But despite what was presented as a painstaking investigation involving scientists, China's national police, and even human experiment subjects, the Chinese side failed to provide answers to two fundamental questions. That's how TMZ got into the players' systems. And how the drug, a powerful prescription heart drug only available in pill form, spread to various surfaces and containers in the kitchen where meals were prepared for China's best athletes. Is not it?
World doping authorities had different reactions to the Russian figure skating sensation.
When Russia's anti-doping agency confirmed that teenage skater Kamila Valieva tested positive for TMZ in 2022, WADA appealed the results. They called on the Court of Arbitration for Sport, the body that adjudicates disputes in sports around the world, to reject Russia's decision to acquit Valieva, who at the time was still competing in the Beijing Winter Olympics.
Valieva said she was an unwitting victim of pollution, the same explanation China provided to swimmers. Russia's Anti-Doping Agency's Appeals Committee said the source of Valieva's low levels of TMZ in her body was strawberries prepared for her by her grandfather, who had a prescription for the drug. He even accepted the claim that he had discovered that it was a dessert. The court summarily rejected the claim as lacking credibility.
In the case of Chinese swimmers, WADA took a completely different position. Despite China's failure to discover the source of TMZ, WADA concluded that it was “not in a position to disprove the possibility that the contamination was the source of TMZ” and that China will not take any measures. He said there was no reason to appeal against the decision. action.
Others who tested positive for similar drugs received at least provisional suspensions.
That the Chinese swimmers were spared even short suspensions contradicts recent precedent and the typical procedure for dealing with questions about the validity of positive tests. Even Russia's Valieva was provisionally barred from competition, at least for a few hours, until Russia's disciplinary committee quickly reinstated her.
Last year, the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency suspended former Olympian Katerina Nash, 45, vice president of the international governing body for cycling, after an out-of-competition test detected traces of a banned appetite stimulant in her body. was suspended. system. Nash was later acquitted, but only after proving she had been dealing medicine for sick dogs. TMZ is considered by anti-doping regulators to be in the same category as that drug.
Anti-doping experts dismissed key claims in China's report.
A 61-page report prepared by Chinese authorities in preparation for the arrest of the 23 swimmers said that low levels of TMZ were detected in samples from all of the swimmers, indicating that the athletes were taking the drug to improve their performance. This includes the claim that this is evidence that they did not.
But experts interviewed by the New York Times said it would be a mistake to make such a sweeping statement, even though such low doses would not be beneficial to a swimmer's performance at that moment. also said it could easily be suggested that the test was carried out at an aquatics stadium. The end of the period of excretion of larger quantities of the drug.
WADA said low concentrations and variability in test results were factors in the decision not to take action.
U.S. law enforcement agencies have also expressed interest.
Federal investigators are aware of this episode and are taking several investigative steps to learn more.
It may seem strange that the FBI and Justice Department would be interested in a failed drug test by a swimmer from another country at a competition on the other side of the world. But a law passed in 2020 allows U.S. authorities to pursue drug fraud wherever it takes part in international competition. Critics of the law say it does not apply to the doping schemes of America's largest sports leagues, such as the NFL, Major League Baseball and NBA.
It was a troubling time when he tested positive.
At the time of the positive test, Chinese swimmers were fine-tuning their training for the Tokyo Olympics qualifying rounds, which have been postponed by a year due to the pandemic.
For the International Olympic Committee, a doping scandal involving a Chinese national, a major force in world sport, would have been difficult to deal with at any time. But in mid-2021, just months before the start of the Summer Olympics, it would have been a disaster. At the same time, China, hit by the coronavirus and subject to the world's strictest lockdown, continued to press ahead with plans to host the 2022 Winter Olympics in Beijing.