How can we expect to have any confidence in the World Anti-Doping Agency? | Caleb Bond
It’s one thing to question the swimming performance that denied Kyle Chalmers a gold medal. But it’s another whole story when you look at WADA’s approach to China, writes Caleb Bond.
Opinion
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It is nigh on impossible to have confidence in the World Anti-Doping Agency anymore.
On multiple occasions now the top anti-cheating body in the world – supposedly the toughest cops on the performance enhancing drugs beat – has allowed China to get away with blue murder.
The latest case is of two swimmers, one of whom is competing at the Paris Olympics, who were provisionally banned for a year after testing positive to steroids.
Except China told no one they had been banned and they were eventually cleared to swim again because CHINADA, China’s anti-doping agency, decided their positive tests were the result of them chowing on contaminated burgers in Beijing – constructed of Australian beef, accompanied by chips and washed down with a soft drink.
WADA, for some reason or another, saw no reason to doubt the reasoning given by a communist regime intent on dominating the world.
I understand the need for due process and fairness but to be suspended for a year without that being disclosed is extraordinary.
And for that to then be unquestioningly overturned on the basis of a dodgy burger seems almost too laughable to be real.
The steroid in question, methandienone, is “not used in any capacity in Australian beef” according to Meat and Livestock Australia.
But it’s all good according to WADA.
It was the same story when 23 Chinese swimmers tested positive for trimetazidine, which increases blood flow to the heart, just before the Tokyo Olympics and CHINADA decided it was a case of mass contamination.
WADA accepted that finding, China went on to win three gold medals in swimming and no one knew about it until News Corp’s Julian Linden broke the story three months ago.
Australia’s representative on the WADA board at the time, former sports minister Richard Colbeck, first learnt of the positive tests when he read it in the newspaper.
And we are somehow meant to accept that Pan Zhanle obliterated the 100m freestyle world record in what is accepted to be a slow pool, beating Kyle Chalmers by more than a second – the biggest margin in some 96 years – in a fair fight.
There is no evidence Zhanle has doped but, given what we know about China’s murky record and WADA’s propensity to accept China’s explanations, many will be wondering how legitimate that race was.
Why does WADA continually allow Chinese athletes to test positive to performance enhancing drugs, cover it up and then give them the all clear when China says it was all a big mistake?
I’d be inclined to take the word of cancer-scammer Belle Gibson over that of the Chinese Communist Party and its government arms.
Something stinks here.
It is hard to think of any other country that would be afforded such leniency.
Most countries and swimmers have privately lost confidence in WADA and the integrity of China’s swimming team.
We know China is willing to expand its power and influence over the world through any means – in business or militarily.
Why would we expect them to not apply that same determination to sport?
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