PA Media/DPA
London
Chinese swimmers competing at the Paris Olympics will have been drug-tested at least eight times between the start of the year and the Games’ opening ceremony, a new report has confirmed.
An anti-doping audit review committee report published on Monday found no evidence of “irregularities, mismanagement or cover-up” by World Aquatics, then known as FINA, in its review of a decision by China’s anti-doping agency not to suspend 23 swimmers who tested positive for the banned substance trimetazidine (TMZ) in 2021.
The committee’s report set out 10 recommendations to further strengthen World Aquatics’ anti-doping programme and “instil the utmost confidence in stakeholders”, as it acknowledged athletes’ trust had been “weakened” by the TMZ case.
The report revealed that “a certain number of athletes from specific nations” would be tested four times by the International Testing Agency (ITA) between January 1 and the opening of the Paris Olympics, and that Chinese athletes would be tested “no less than eight times” during this period.
“The ITA will use its best efforts to have all such tests of Chinese athletes conducted by a sample collection authority other than CHINADA, and to have the samples analysed by laboratories outside of China,” the committee report stated.
The report also said World Aquatics would publish the results of pre-Games testing before the opening ceremony.
The Chinese anti-doping agency (CHINADA) determined that the positive tests were the result of food contamination at a team hotel where the athletes were staying, a decision which neither FINA nor the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) ultimately decided to appeal against.
The case only came to light through reporting by the New York Times and German broadcaster ARD in April.
An interim report by Swiss prosecutor Eric Cottier published last week found WADA had not shown “favouritism or deference” towards China in how it handled the case, and that it “acted reasonably” in not pursuing an appeal against CHINADA’s decision.
