China file: WADA defends action after positive doping tests

As of: April 22, 2024 7:50 p.m

The World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) has defended its decision to admit 23 Chinese swimmers to the 2021 Olympics despite positive doping tests.

“We had no evidence that the banned substance was not due to food contamination,” said WADA President Witold Banka during a WADA press conference in Montreal, Canada. “If we had taken the case to the International Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS), we would certainly have lost.”

According to Banka, the World Swimming Federation also agreed to the procedure. China’s swimming team won six medals in Tokyo, including three golds. Some of these athletes may also swim in the Paris Olympics, which begin in July.

The WADA president emphasized that WADA acts “regardless of the nationality” of the people and has in the past challenged such decisions before the CAS in the case of Chinese athletes – such as Sun Yang, who was later banned for more than four years.

No knowledge of how the medication got into the hotel kitchen

Trimetazidine, a prescription heart medication, was found in the athletes. Ross Wenzel, general counsel at WADA, pointed out at the media event that some athletes had been tested three times in a short period of time and that these tests had produced different results, which indicated a low concentration.

“That doesn’t fit with intentional fraud,” said Wenzel. All athletes were in the same hotel in the city of Shijiazhuang – the responsibility should lie in the food offered and therefore in the hotel’s kitchen. Wenzel admitted that there was no knowledge of how the drug got into the kitchen.

The ARD doping editorial team has the investigation report from the Chinese anti-doping agency CHINADA. The Ministry of Public Security, an arm of government surveillance, was named as the investigating agency. The report refers to contaminated food in the hotel kitchen. Traces of trimetazidine were found in the extractor hood, on spice containers and in the drain – two and a half months after the tests.

Contaminated food? Experts consider the representation from China to be doubtful

The forensic toxicologist and pharmacist Fritz Sörgel tested the Chinese information experimentally on behalf of the ARD doping editorial team. Sörgel said after various experiments that he considered it “extremely unlikely” that the events had occurred as described in the report: “The concentrations that were allegedly found by the laboratory in China could actually only have arisen because the doping agent was administered weeks before.”

The positive cases were correctly entered into WADA’s official ADAMS reporting system in March 2021 after a two-month delay attributed to a local Covid outbreak. However, instead of reporting an official anti-doping rule violation (ADRV), the internal Chinese investigation took place. In this way, the usual steps of publicly announcing the case and imposing an interim ban were avoided.

Criticism of WADA from the USA and Germany

Léa Krüger, member of the executive board of the Athletes Germany organization, described WADA’s actions as a “slap in the face of all clean athletes.” Trust in institutions that had been laboriously built up had “simply evaporated,” said the saber fencer.

Travis Tygart, head of the US Anti-Doping Agency, spoke of “shocking revelations” and a “knife in the back of all clean athletes”. The case “reeks of a cover-up at the highest levels of the World Anti-Doping Agency.”