Wed, Apr 24, 2024 page7

• USADA calls for probe into China swimming case

  • Reuters and AP
  • • 
    • 
    • 

  The head of the US Anti-Doping Agency (USADA) on Monday demanded an investigation into the World Anti-Doping Agency’s (WADA) handling of 23 positive tests by Chinese swimmers and welcomed the global body’s threat of legal action.

  During a nearly two-hour video call with the media, WADA fired back at critics and offered detailed explanation of its decision not to pursue sanctions on the swimmers, who tested positive for trimetazidine months before the COVID-19-delayed Tokyo Olympics began in July 2021.

  The swimmers escaped punishment after an investigation by Chinese authorities ruled the adverse analytical findings were the result of being inadvertently exposed to the drug through contamination.

  

  The Chinese and the Olympic flag wave during the opening ceremony of the Beijing Winter Olympics on Feb. 4, 2022.

  Photo: AP

  A report determined that all the swimmers who tested positive were staying at the same hotel where traces of heart medication trimetazidine were found in the kitchen, the extraction unit above the hall and drainage units.

  There was no explanation for how the trimetazidine found its way into the hotel.

  China’s 30-member swimming team won six medals at the Tokyo Games, including three golds.

  There was no public notice of the case, nor any provisional suspension, both of which are called for in the world anti-doping code.

  “The whole situation is a tragedy for clean athletes around the world,” USADA CEO Travis Tygart said. “They should have announced the violation they should have disqualified the athletes. They should have just provisionally suspended” them.

  “Clean athletes look at this system and are just frustrated and upset that a number of athletes at this level can test positive for a substance like this and you can have [China] state security create this excuse and then that gets signed off on by the global regulator,” he said.

  The New York Times reported on Monday that the White House was calling for an inquiry into the Chinese swimmers and would bring it up when anti-doping officials meet in Washington this week.

  With Tygart calling the ruling a “potential cover-up,” WADA is threatening legal action.

  “I would welcome it [a lawsuit] because it would be a lot of fun to see the discovery between the e-mails and the discussion why they decided not to follow the rules and cover this situation up,” he said.

  Meanwhile, in the two years before WADA cleared the swimmers, China contributed nearly US$2 million above its yearly requirements to WADA programs, including one designed to bolster the agency’s investigations and intelligence unit.

  The Associated Press obtained confidential minutes from meetings of the WADA executive committee that lists China as having given US$993,000 in 2018 and US$992,000 in 2019, two years that led to one of its Olympians being elected as one of the agency’s vice presidents.

  The Chinese contributions were part of a pattern that illustrates the country’s growing influence on the drug-fighting agency at about the same time WADA’s relationship with its biggest contributor, the US, was fraying.

  WADA did not hide the extra funding, putting out a little-noticed news release in December 2020 announcing China’s US$992,000 donation.

  “All this was done in total transparency,” WADA director-general Olivier Niggli said in Monday’s news conference. “And frankly, the [question] has absolutely nothing to do with what we are discussing today. So, the optics is a question [I appreciate], but I have absolutely no problem with the relationship we have with China.”

  The main part of WADA’s budget each year comes from a 50-50 split between governments of the world and the Olympic movement. China’s additional contributions came on top of US$430,000 its government supplied WADA as part of the routine payments in 2019.

  The US gave the largest regular contribution that year — US$2.51 million, but that came as its relationship with WADA was growing tense.

  By 2021, the US was sparring with WADA over passage of a new law written to combat doping in response to the long-running drug scandal in Russia.

  It also was withholding part of its payment, with the country’s top government representative in the world anti-doping structure referencing the “sorry state of affairs” in WADA’s governance.

  While the US tangled with WADA, China was chipping in on what was essentially a fundraising effort by WADA to ramp up its fledgling intelligence and investigations program, which played a role in the current case.

  China’s contributions came as it was about to host the 2022 Winter Olympics and in the lead-up to the November 2019 election of International Olympic Committee member Yang Yang of China to WADA vice president. Yang, a former Olympic speedskater, was elected to her second three-year term in 2022.
• Most Popular

  • 1

    Taiwan to keep advanced chip tech

  • 2

    Taiwan’s fall would be a ‘disaster’: Colby

  • 3

    TSMC won’t produce 2nm chips in US next year: Kuo

  • 4

    Actor Darren Wang questioned over attack of cab driver

  • 5

    Taiwan rejects China’s UN claim