WADA claims vindication, fails to restore trust
By Chip Le Grand and Tom Decent
The World Anti-Doping Agency says it has been cleared of wrongdoing over its part in quietly accepting China’s explanation for why 23 of its best swimmers failed drug tests without penalty or disclosure in the lead-up to the Tokyo Olympics.
Yet, as Australia’s Olympic team prepares to travel to Paris for the next instalment of the Games, the interim findings of a WADA-commissioned review into its handling of the Chinese swimming scandal have done little to restore confidence in anti-doping, with an international athlete association declaring “widespread distrust in WADA and the global anti-doping system”.
A threat by WADA president Witold Banka to take legal action against his agency’s most vociferous critics drew a rebuke from USADA chief executive Travis Tygart, who is pushing for wholesale changes to WADA’s governance and approach.
“From the beginning, our goal has been uncovering the truth and the facts of this situation on behalf of clean athletes,” Tygart said. “Until WADA leadership shares that goal and stops spewing vitriol at any voice of dissent, there will be no trust in the global anti-doping system.
“Athletes deserve openness, transparency, and truth – not more deflection and bullying.”
A review by retired Swiss prosecutor Eric Cottier, commissioned by WADA after a joint investigation by the New York Times and German broadcaster ARD revealed in April that Chinese swimmers had raced in Tokyo after testing positive to a banned metabolic modulator, concluded that WADA’s decision to not appeal the case was “indisputably reasonable”.
Cottier also found no evidence of bias or impropriety in how WADA had assessed a decision by China’s anti-doping agency, CHINADA, to attribute the failed drug tests to contamination from a hotel kitchen and not pursue anti-doping proceedings against any of the swimmers.
Cottier’s review, which ran from early May to the start of July, was limited to these two questions and did not involve investigations beyond re-examining the case file from three years ago, scrutinising WADA communications and questioning WADA officials.
Global Athlete, a representative body established to lobby for the interests of clean athletes, said the review was “inherently flawed” from the start. “Today’s report ... continues to support WADA’s narrative of no wrongdoing and fails to provide the necessary transparency to effectively debunk this case,” it said.
Despite the limitations of the review, which shed no further light on how traces of Trimetazidine (TMZ), a substance contained in a prescription heart medication, found its way into the kitchen of a Shijiazhuang City hotel where Chinese swimmers stayed during their national championships, Cottier’s interim report contains some intriguing new details about the scandal.
Cottier’s file notes show that on June 16, 2021, the day after WADA received CHINADA’s decision to chalk up all 28 positive tests involving 23 athletes to inadvertent contamination, WADA’s director general, Olivier Niggli, discussed the case with one of his board members, Li Yingchuan, who at the time was also China’s deputy minister for sport.
Although there are scant details of their discussion in Cottier’s report, the fact that it took place highlights Tygart’s concerns about WADA’s governance arrangements.
Cottier’s file notes also show that in the same week that Chinese swimmers who failed drug tests were competing in Tokyo, WADA was still questioning CHINADA about how and where the TMZ was discovered at the hotel.
On July 30, the day that one of the Chinese swimmers, Chun Wang, won Olympic gold in the 200 metres individual medley, WADA’s senior director of science and medicine, Olivier Rabin, made clear his concerns about the gaps in the Chinese story.
“He was surprised that the Chinese had not found, among the kitchen or hotel staff, a person taking TMZ,” Collier noted.
“As he was unable to exclude the contamination scenario in a solidly substantial manner, he saw no other solution than to accept it, even if he continued to have doubts about the reality of contamination as described by the Chinese authorities.”
The case was formally closed on August 4, 2021, just after Chinese swimmers completed their haul of three gold medals and six medals in total in Tokyo.
Australia’s Olympic team chef de mission Anna Meares, when asked about the Cottier report, said Australian athletes heading to Paris should take comfort from its findings.
“From what I have read ... I do have confidence that they followed the right processes,” she said. “That confidence should spread through the athletes.
“The key to me is for athletes to feel like they can have trust in the process and the transparency of that process, and hopefully, this will take the distraction of that off the table.”
Qin Haiyang celebrates his 2023 world championship win against Australia’s Zac Stubblety-Cook in the men’s 200m breaststroke.Credit: Getty Images
The inclusion of 11 swimmers, who failed drug tests, in China’s Olympic team will put this to the test on the Paris pool deck.
One of the Chinese swimmers, Qin Haiyang, is the 200 metres breaststroke world record-holder and chief rival of Australia’s defending Olympic champion, Zac Stubblety-Cook.
New York Times journalist Michael Schmidt, an investigative reporter who helped break the story of the Chinese doping scandal, reported earlier this month that the FBI and US Justice Department had launched criminal investigations into how the Chinese swimmers were allowed to compete in Tokyo.
WADA president Witold Banka, speaking after Cottier had presented his interim report to the WADA executive committee, said the findings had “set the record straight” and showed WADA had approached the Chinese positive tests with the same scepticism it exhibited towards other cases.
WADA’s director general, Olivier Niggli, said Cottier had “cleared WADA of any wrongdoing” and would now work towards completing his final report.
WADA’s sense of vindication is unlikely to be shared by clean athletes. The greatest Olympic swimmer in history, Michael Phelps, last month appeared before a committee of Congress and expressed a “profound sense of injustice”.
“As athletes, our faith can no longer be blindly placed in the World Anti-Doping Agency, an organisation that continuously proves that it is either incapable or unwilling to enforce its policies consistently around the world,” Phelps said.
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