World Aquatics appears to be making good on its vow to drug test Chinese swimmers more frequently leading up to the Paris Olympics next week.
During the Chinese Olympic swimming squad’s first 10 days in Paris, its roster of 31 athletes has already been drug tested almost 200 times in total, according to a since-deleted social media post on Weibo by team nutritionist Yu Liang. If those numbers are indeed accurate, that comes out to about six tests per swimmer.
“We came [for the tests] at six in the morning and during the lunch break — we had nowhere to take a rest but a sofa in the hotel lobby,” Yu wrote. “We came again at 9 p.m., and had to stay up until the middle of the night.”
Eleven Chinese Olympic swimmers in Paris were implicated in a 2021 doping controversy involving 23 Chinese swimmers who tested positive for the banned substance trimetazidine (TMZ). They were never punished after the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) declined to dispute China’s assertion that they unwittingly ingested the heart medication due to contamination in their hotel kitchen.
World Aquatics said last week that Chinese Olympic swimmers will be tested by the International Testing Agency “no less than eight times” from Jan. 1, 2024 until the start of the Paris Olympics.
Both World Aquatics and a Swiss prosecutor reviewed the 2021 Chinese doping controversy and determined earlier this month that WADA handled the case according to protocol. However, the U.S. federal investigation into the scandal remains ongoing and criticism has continued with Michael Phelps and Allison Schmitt testifying at a recent Congressional hearing. In May, seven-time Olympic champion Katie Ledecky said her faith in the anti-doping system “is at an all-time low.”
Last month, the New York Times reported that Wang Shun, Yang Junxuan, and Qin Haiyang tested positive for another banned substance in 2016 and 2017, but their levels of clenbuterol were between six and 50 times below the minimum reporting level. Wang, Yang, and Qin also tested positive for TMZ in January of 2021 along with Zhang Yufei, about seven months before the Summer Games in Tokyo. Wang, Yang, and Zhang went on to win Olympic gold medals in Tokyo while Qin broke the world record in the 200 breast last year.
When reports first surfaced in April surrounding the 2021 Chinese doping controversy, China denied any fault and called the allegations of doping “fake news.”
I recommend this recent Buisness Insider piece with Victor Conte, the architect of the BALCO scandal. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2op5XG7LGkI
He argues there’s every incentive for athletes to dope and that antidoping agencies are simply about protecting the images of organizations like the USOC and IOC, in fact he goes so far to blame those organizations for doping and frames the athletes of victims of an explotative system.
I don’t even know who the audience is for this stunt exactly, it looks like these agencies just want to pat themselves on the back. I feel bad for the athletes these test are extremely invasive and there’s a basic human reason why they aren’t subjected to this amount usually.
This is too much testing.
Is the number of attempts important ? We have yet to receive a convincing explanation for the disqualification of 23 people in one test.
WADA trying to save face when it’s already been decapitated.
As others have emphasized, intense training is when the doping occurs. Boosted foundation year after year. Testing them en masse on the eve of the global competition is like carefully inspecting the label on a bottle filled with cyanide months earlier.
The damage is done who cares
What is the point of testing then in competition? Of course they’re not going to test positive now…
I bet they have the same system as the GDR did. The testing insitutitions are state-controlled, they test the athletes before a big meet and when they happen to test positive, they hide the evidence and the athlete is pulling out because of some training injury or illness or some such nonsense. And the following year, they just stop taking whatever they’re on earlier.
They’re lucky to be in Paris and should have zero complaints about testing at any time of the day.
They’re obviously overcompensating because of their prior laxity. Now both WADA and the Chinese can use the propaganda talking point that “Chinese swimmers are the most tested athletes ever!”.