Chinese doping scandal raises fears that sport is just as dirty as ever
The most worrying aspect is what it highlights about the ambition of those charged with preventing cheating in sport. Too many don’t really care about stopping doping, all they care about is being seen to be trying to stop doping
IVIVIDLY remember finding out about the Russian doping scandal of 2014. Like most people, I could not believe the revelations of the covert holes in walls, the swapped doping samples, the skulking about in the dead of night and the heights the corruption reached within Russia (spoiler: it went right to the top).
It was called the biggest statesponsored doping programme in the history of sport and caused outrage around the world.
How, everyone wondered, could such a widespread and systematic doping programme have been allowed to flourish within Russia?
It was uncovered, remember, not by any anti-doping organisations but due to a whistleblower. Without Grigory Rodchenkov, we may never have found out about the hundreds of Russian athletes who were cheating.
Maybe I was naive, but I thought we would never see anything like the Russian scandal again. I believed that there was a widespread will from those at the top of anti-doping to clean up sport and make sure countries never got away with such blatant cheating again.
How wrong I was.
Over the past week, another quite astonishing story has emerged. And it has shown that I was both naive and stupid to think that there was truly a desire to clean up sport.
By that, I don’t mean going after the individuals who may fail a doping test. Yes, they need to be caught but really, catching an individual here and there is the easy part.
And that’s the issue. While individuals are being caught, countries are being permitted to cover up unsavoury behaviour within their borders, with no action taken.
It has been revealed that in the lead up to the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games, 23 Chinese swimmers tested positive for the same banned drug at a domestic meet.
That drug was TMZ, a heart medication that is purported to help athletes’ hearts function better when undertaking tough physical exercise.
Yet rather than any bans being meted out to these Chinese athletes, they were deemed to be the victims of an unusual case of mass contamination, with the substance apparently making its way into athletes’ systems as a result of contamination from a hotel kitchen.
TMZ, which is only available in pill form, was, it was claimed by the Chinese authorities, on kitchen surfaces and so when food was prepared there, it made its way into the food and in turn, into the athletes’ systems.
That the Chinese authorities attempted to dismissively wave away any suggestion of mass-doping of their athletes, is not in itself surprising. It’s hardly unprecedented for a nation to try to explain away positive doping tests in the run-up to an Olympic Games.
So far, so predictable. It’s what came next that is astonishing.
The World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) are charged with keeping sport clean, or as clean as possible.
You would have thought, then, that their interest would have been piqued when so many swimmers, from one of the strongest Olympic nations, returned positive tests.
But, unbelievably, their concern was minimal. WADA entirely accepted the claim of the Chinese authorities that the reason for the presence of TMZ in nearly two dozen of their swimmers was contamination.
WADA “concluded that it was not in a position to disprove the possibility that contamination was the source of TMZ”.
This willingness to accept the Chinese explanation with so little push-back is astonishing.
And so, without even so much as a short suspension, the doping story was brushed under the carpet and the Chinese swimmers were free to compete at Tokyo 2020, which many of them did, with some winning medals, including three golds.
There is so much to say about this story, but the most worrying aspect is what it highlights about the ambition of those charged with preventing cheating in sport.
Too many don’t really care about stopping doping, all they care about is being seen to be trying to stop doping.
WADA have denied any wrongdoing and strongly refuted any suggestion of a cover-up.
What was shown last week, however, is that there are easy targets when it comes to punishing doping in sport, and more difficult ones. WADA are more than happy to go after the low-hanging fruit, the individuals who have limited means to fight back.
A perfect example is Russian figure skater, Kamila Valieva, the 15-year-old who was also found to have TMZ in her system and who claimed contamination was the source. She was, funnily enough, treated very differently from the 23 Chinese swimmers, being banned for four years.
It is, therefore, impossible to avoid coming to the conclusion that finding 23 of China’s swimmers guilty of doping just months before the Olympic Games was, politically, extremely inconvenient. Much easier to instead accept a doubtful story they were victims of contamination.
We all know doping goes on within elite sport and that sport will never be entirely clean.
The problem is that, as things stand, there seems to be a value judgment made by those in charge about who is worth going after and who is not.
The lack of transparency means we have a system where the easy targets are caught and punished while the trickier, less convenient suspects seem to be let off scot-free.
And that is why sport today is likely to be just as dirty as it has ever been.
TOMORROW Craig Fowler