WADA confirms it cleared Chinese swimmers to compete at Tokyo Games citing contaminated samples

The world's top anti‐doping regulator says 23 Chinese swim‐ mers were cleared to compete at the Tokyo Olympics despite test‐ ing positive for a banned heart medication because it agreed with Chinese authorities and ruled that their samples had been contaminated.

The World Anti‐Doping Agency said Saturday that the swim‐ mers tested positive for the heart medication trimetazidine in the months leading up to the start of the Tokyo Olympics in 2021 but that Chinese authori‐ ties told the agency the positives were the result of contamina‐ tion.

"Ultimately, we concluded that there was no concrete basis to challenge the asserted contami‐ nation," WADA's senior director of science and medicine Olivier Rabin said in a news release.

The 30‐member Chinese swim team won six medals in Tokyo, including three golds. Many of the athletes still compete for China and are expected to swim at the Paris Olympics this sum‐ mer.

Reports about the doping posi‐ tives came out Saturday in the Daily Telegraph in Sydney and The New York Times.

WADA responded to what it called "some misleading and po‐ tentially defamatory media cov‐ erage this week" and explained the process it undertook upon learning about the positive tests.

The global drug‐fighting organ‐ ization said it also had been given a tip by the U.S. Anti‐Doping Agency as early as 2020 — be‐ fore this case arose — about al‐ legations of doping cover‐ups in China but that USADA never fol‐ lowed up with evidence.

USADA CEO Travis Tygart called the news of the Chinese positive tests "crushing."

"It's even more devastating to learn the World Anti‐Doping Agency and the Chinese Anti‐ Doping Agency secretly, until now, swept these positives under the carpet by failing to fairly and evenly follow the global rules that apply to every‐ one else in the world," Tygart said.

World Aquatics, which oversees global swimming, told the Daily Telegraph it was confident "that these (adverse analytical find‐ ings) were handled diligently and professionally, and in accor‐ dance with all applicable anti‐ doping regulations, including the World Anti‐Doping Code."

The drug at the center of this case was also the medication that led to the suspension of Russian figure skater Kamila Va‐ lieva at the Winter Olympics in Beijing in 2022.

In that case, WADA moved quickly to sanction Valieva upon learning about her positive test.

The case underscores what many view as a flaw in the global anti‐doping system — that a country's own anti‐doping or‐ ganization is often the first line of defense in catching drug cheats and those organizations have different levels of motivation to fulfill that role.