British swimming legend Adam Peaty calls for ‘fair fight’ as Chinese doping saga continues to distract ahead of Olympics
British swimming legend Adam Peaty has plunged head first into the Chinese doping scandal that threatens to overshadow the Paris Olympics, questioning whether we will see a ‘fair fight’.
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British swimming legend Adam Peaty has plunged head first into the Chinese doping scandal that is threatening to overshadow the Paris Olympics, publicly questioning whether the greatest sports event on the planet will be a “fair fight.”
Never frightened to call it as he sees it, Peaty has been a long-time critic of the way doping cases are dealt with in swimming and he’s not impressed by the handling of the latest Chinese bombshell.
“For me, I want a fair fight,” Peaty said. “And if it’s not fair then it takes the enjoyment out for me, so I just do what I do.
“That’s all I can control, give my best preparation and at this point in time it would just be a distraction to think anything else, because there’s nothing really I can do.”
The greatest breaststroker the world has ever seen, Peaty will be chasing a third straight gold medal in the 100m at Paris after winning the event at Rio and Tokyo. The GOAT Michael Phelps is the only male swimmer to have won gold in the same individual event at three Olympics so the stakes are huge for the Englishman.
His main rival is China’s Qin Haiyang, who was named male swimmer of the year in 2023.
But Qin is also one of 23 Chinese swimmers who was secretly exonerated after testing positive to banned heart drug in 2021.
The secret investigation only came to light this year, but has dominated the build up to Paris, leading to accusations the Chinese are treated more leniently than swimmers from other countries.
Normally, athletes who test positive to performance enhancing drugs are given an automatic ban even if they did not intentionally take the substance, but the 23 Chinese all got off scot-free after it was deemed they were contaminated by food at a hotel kitchen.
“I think if other countries aren’t living up to that standard, then it’s a real shame that brings a real dark cloud over what the Olympics is meant to stand for,” said Peaty’s teammate Tom Dean, who won gold medals in the 200m freestyle and 4x200m in Tokyo.
“Doping has, unfortunately, been linked with Olympic sport since its inception and even just recently, you know, in the last 12 months, we’ve seen reports come out about Chinese swimming and a lot of questions that have been raised there.
“I just hope that when I step on those blocks at the games, it’s a completely level playing field between myself and the seven other men in my race.”
Another member of the British swim team for Paris, Freya Colbert, said the revelations about the Chinese case were deeply infuriating for clean competitors.
“It’s really hard for us that we want to step up on the block to the Olympic Games and know that it’s a fair playing field,” she said.
“We’re tested so rigorously, so to see reports that other people aren’t being tested rigorously is something that’s really quite upsetting. I think it ruins the reliability of the results you see.“
Facing intense scrutiny after the story was broken by this masthead on April 20, the World Anti-Doping Agency agreed to an independent review into whether it had breached any of its own regulations or shown any bias towards the Chinese.
The review found WADA had acted fairly, so none of the Chinese swimmers who failed the tests have been sanctioned, with 11 qualifying for Paris.
Swimming’s global governing body World Aquatics was also cleared of any wrongdoing after it conducted a separate review, though it did ask the International Testing Agency (ITA) to conduct extra drug tests on all the Chinese swimmers competing in the French capital.
Unsurprisingly, the matter was also raised at the International Olympic Committee’s opening news conference on Saturday, with an IOC spokesman reaffirming the stance from officials that the case is closed.
“As we already said many times, there was a report by an independent prosecutor who found that WADA had acted properly and that there seemed to be no case to answer,” Mark Adams said.
“As far as we’re concerned, the interim report and we’ve had indications from the investigator that the full report will be the same, has found that there is no case to answer.
“The ITA particularly will continue to do targeted testing and that may or may not include those athletes.”
Addressing a wide range of issues, the IOC also said it was resigned to Paris Olympics being targeted by disinformation attacks following recent incidents that have been linked back to Russia.
Last year, a fake documentary attacking the Olympics went viral, using AI-generated voices to impersonate Hollywood star Tom Cruise.
“It’s not the first or last time that the IOC will be targeted with misinformation. It’s getting more and more sophisticated,” Adams said
“I’m afraid it’s one of those things that we have to live with…it’s part of the divided world we live in.”
Russia is banned from competing at Paris.
Adams also said the global tech outage caused by cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike was a good test ahead of the Games.
“There were some significant problems on the morning but it was pretty well dealt with. It was quite a good rehearsal,“ he said.
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