‘Are you scared of China?’: Doping suspicion turns the Paris pool into a well of mistrust

Zac Stubblety-Cook would like to think that when he dives into the Paris pool next week to defend his Olympic title, he won’t be racing a drug cheat on the other side of the lane rope. It is all a swimmer can hope for in a sport which, in the nearly half a century since suspicions of systematic doping first emerged at the Montreal Games, has always required a leap of faith.

The difference at these Games is that Stubblety-Cook’s belief in clean sport has been shaken not by a rival swimmer or nation, but by a global anti-doping system which, while never failsafe, was supposed to have his back.

His problem is not, fundamentally, with China’s 200m breaststroke world record holder Qin Haiyang, one of 11 Chinese swimmers who has come to Paris after secretly testing positive to a banned substance three and half years ago. It is with the Chinese anti-doping agency CHINADA, the World Anti-Doping Agency WADA and questions that should have been answered long ago but, instead, have turned the Paris pool into a well of mistrust.

“For me, racing someone that was one of those athletes, or finding out he was one of those athletes, was disappointing,” says Stubblety-Cook. “I think it’s less about what country they came from, and more about the system and how the system ultimately, it feels like it’s failed, and that’s the truth.”

In contrast to Mack Horton, the Australian swimmer who famously called out the checkered testing history of his Chinese rival Sun Yang on the eve of the Rio Olympics eight years ago, Stubblety-Cook is far from a lone voice on the Paris pool deck. American swimming legend Katie Ledecky has declared her faith in anti-doping at an all-time low. “I think everyone’s heard what the athletes think. They want transparency. They want further answers to the questions that still remain.” Britain’s breaststroke star Adam Peaty says he just wants a fair fight.

Zac Stubblety-Cook trains to defend his Olympic title. Credit: Getty Images

To understand the gulf that exists, at the start of the Paris Games, between the athletes who have come here to compete and the organisation responsible for regulating the global anti-doping system, the place to take stock was the sidelines of this week’s International Olympic Committee Session, the annual meeting of Olympic movement poobahs. It was here, on the eve of the opening ceremony, that WADA’s most senior officials spent 45 minutes insisting that a murky episode involving 23 Chinese swimmers, a prescription heart medication used as an off-label metabolic modulator, an undeclared batch of positive drug tests before the last Olympics and a bizarre contamination theory set in the kitchen of a Shijiazhuang City hotel was in fact crystal clear.

“I think it is obvious from the legal perspective that everything that we’ve done regarding this case was in accordance with the standards,” said WADA president Witold Banka.

“We see from some individuals that this case is very politicised and it’s obvious when you see some comments and very unfair criticism and the allegation towards WADA that there was a cover-up or some violations from our side. Those allegations are, diplomatically speaking, very unfair.”

The questions asked by international journalists, including reporters who have spent years investigating and chronicling drug cheating in sport, show the incredulous mood in the room.

“Can you really sit there and tell sports fans that anti doping authorities are on the side of stopping dopers rather than facilitating doping and cheating?” asked Rob Harris from Britain’s Sky News. This from Deutsche Welle’s Jonathan Crane: “Why did you not do more to investigate at the time? Are you scared of China or are you simply scared that if you dug too deep you would find out something you didn’t want to?” Nine’s Damien Ryan got to the nub of it: “Are you sensing from the room that you have a problem and you haven’t fixed it?”

WADA president Witold Banka was grilled by the world’s sports journalists.Credit: AP

WADA’s responses were instructive and at times, troubling. Instead of acknowledging the crisis in confidence facing anti-doping, Banka and WADA Director General Olivier Niggli sought to deflect scrutiny onto their most prominent critic, US anti-doping boss Travis Tygart, pointing out the long-standing anomaly that three quarters of American Olympians are selected out of an NCAA college sport system which is not a signatory to the World Anti-Doping Code.

“The incontrovertible truth is that 90 per cent of American athletes compete not under the World Anti-Doping Code,” Banka said in response to a question from a journalist from China’s state-run Xinhua news agency. “This is a serious issue. We have raised this many times.”

Niggli took aim at media reports which identified Chinese swimmers who failed drug tests, suggesting that both WADA and the athletes were considering legal action. Banka blamed Tygart for the collapse of WADA’s relationship with USADA. “We are always up for collaboration and it’s obvious that they are one of our stakeholders,” he said. “But the current situation, after all these defamatory comments, allegations... statements which are totally against the principle of collaboration, it is a very difficult situation. The relations are really bad.”

A day earlier, the IOC used its newly acquired contractual leverage with Salt Lake City, announced as the host city for the 2034 Winter Olympics, to attempt to stymie an ongoing criminal investigation into the Chinese doping scandal by the US Justice Department and FBI. The IOC is, in effect, the parent company of WADA, controlling half of WADA board positions and providing half the agency’s budget. Utah governor Spencer Cox, a key figure behind the city’s Games bid, says a contractual clause added late to the host city agreement requires the US to “respect the supreme authority of WADA” on all anti-doping matters, at pain of losing the rights to the 2034 Games. “That was the only way that we could guarantee that we would get the Games,” Cox said after Salt Lake was given the nod.

The contractual clause is specifically aimed at the extraterritorial jurisdiction of the Rodchenkov Act, a US law named after the former boss of the Moscow drug testing lab who blew the whistle on Russia’s state-sponsored doping program. The law makes doping a criminal offence and gives the FBI global reach to track down cheats in any international sport in which US athletes compete.

WADA has consistently opposed the jurisdiction of the Rodchenkov Act since it was passed into law by the US Senate four years ago, arguing that giving any nation power to criminally prosecute doping offences beyond its borders would disrupt the existing anti-doping order and WADA’s role as its global regulator. “WADA remains concerned that by unilaterally exerting US criminal jurisdiction over all global doping activity, the Act will likely undermine clean sport by jeopardising critical partnerships and cooperation between nations,” the agency said in a statement issued shortly after the law was passed in 2020.

WADA can today argue that its concerns were prescient. But in opposing an FBI probe into what happened Shijiazhuang City during the 2020-21 Chinese national swimming championships where 23 athletes tested positive to Trimetazidine, WADA and the IOC are now actively seeking to stop independent further scrutiny of a major drug scandal which so far has only been investigated by Chinese authorities.

Speaking to this masthead from Colorado Springs, Tygart said that as another Olympics get under way, the big picture of anti-doping is bleak.

“Athletes and the public deserve answers to the many questions of why WADA allowed China to sweep 23 positive cases of its elite swimmers under the rug,” he said. “Nothing more and really nothing less.

Australia’s Mack Horton refuses to share the podium with Sun Yang at the world championships.Credit: AP

“It appears given their refusal to answer any of the basic questions they instead resort to threats and fear-mongering instead of transparency. This is a classic approach when there is something to hide and their ongoing deflection is further reason why the world needs answers. The more they protest and fail to provide basic answers, the more their credibility crumbles before the world’s eyes which is sad to see on the eve of what should be a celebration of fair sport.”

When Mack Horton took aim at Sun Yang in Rio, the sporting world was still coming to terms with what the Russians had been up but WADA and the IOC were at least seen to be in the corner of clean athletes. WADA commissioned Canadian lawyer Richard McLaren to lead an independent investigation into what happened. His comprehensive findings exposed the full cynicism of Putin’s sports system and as a result, Russian athletes were banned en masse from the Rio Games and those allowed to complete were forced to do so under a neutral flag.

As Zac Stubblety-Cook prepares to take the starting blocks in Paris, another doping scandal is raging. This time, the world’s athletes don’t know where WADA stands or who is in their corner.

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