‘Not what the Olympics is about’: Sport integrity chief laments doping cloud over Paris 2024

Sport Integrity Australia boss David Sharpe is frustrated another Olympic Games is taking place beneath a “doping cloud”, saying questions remain unanswered about a cluster of failed drug tests by Chinese swimmers.

In his first public comments since the release of the interim findings of a review commissioned by the World Anti-Doping Agency into the doping scandal, Sharpe said it remained unclear why the swimmers were allowed to compete while their cases were determined.

Sport Integrity Australia boss David Sharpe says the Cottier review hasn’t answered his questions. Credit: Alex Ellinghausen

“The interim report hasn’t answered questions that we are seeking answers to,” Sharpe told this masthead. “We are certainly expecting the final report will.

“It is really disappointing that we are going to yet another Olympics where there is a potential doping scandal dominating the headlines. That is not what the Olympics is about.

“I would have thought that, in the interest of protecting the Games and the spirit of the Games, there would be clarity before going into that, so that athletes all over the world, including China, would know what the process is and how it stands.”

Sharpe’s comments echo those of US Anti-Doping Agency boss Travis Tygart, who has also challenged the independence and scope of a WADA-commissioned review conducted by former Swiss prosecutor Eric Cottier.

Breaststroke world champion Qin Haiyang, one of 23 Chinese swimmers who failed a drug test, is competing in Paris.Credit: Getty Images

Cottier found it was “indisputably reasonable” for WADA to accept a conclusion by Chinese authorities that contamination of a hotel kitchen, rather than deliberate doping, caused 23 swimmers to test positive for trimetazidine (TMZ), a banned metabolic modulator found in a prescription heart medication.

Cottier also found no evidence of bias or impropriety in how WADA approached the case, which was still being finalised as swimmers who tested positive during China’s national championships were racing and winning medals at the Tokyo Games.

USADA requested the public release of all material relied on by China’s anti-doping agency, CHINADA, and WADA to clear the Chinese swimmers. One of USA Swimming’s most outspoken anti-doping campaigners, breaststroke champion Lilly King, declared she didn’t have confidence that she wouldn’t be racing against drug cheats in Paris.

The mistrust within Paris’ La Defense Arena, where the Olympic swimming competition begins in five days’ time, is reminiscent of the ill will which descended on the Rio pool deck eight after Russia’s state-sponsored doping program was exposed by another ARD report. Australia’s Mack Horton supercharged an already tense environment when he declared China’s Sun Yang a drug cheat.

There are 11 Chinese swimmers in Paris who tested positive to TMZ. Sun Yang tested positive to the same substance in 2014 and served a three-month ban.

The public intervention of David Sharpe, who will finish a seven-year stint as Sport Integrity Australia chief executive in August, is significant. His comments are likely to resonate with Australian swimmers struck by the inconsistency between how anti-doping authorities treated the Chinese swimmers and their teammate Shayna Jack.

Jack was immediately sent home from the 2018 world championships when she tested positive to Ligandrol, a banned selective androgen receptor modulator linked to a slew of contamination cases. She was barred from competition for two years, including the Tokyo Olympics, despite successive Court of Arbitration for Sport findings that she did not knowingly take a banned substance.

After a joint investigation by The New York Times and German broadcaster ARD revealed the previously undisclosed positive tests involving Chinese swimmers, Sharpe wrote to WADA calling for an independent review. So far, he is not satisfied with what it has produced.

Shayna Jack will compete at her first Olympics after missing the Tokyo Games due to suspension.Credit: Paul Harris

The most glaring unanswered questions about the Chinese swimming case are how TMZ found its way into the kitchen of the Shijiazhuang City hotel where the athletes were staying and why, once the athletes tested positive, they weren’t provisionally suspended until the matter was properly investigated and their cases resolved.

“If we had a similar case, that is not the way we would have managed it,” Sharpe said during an exclusive interview to mark his exit from Sport Integrity Australia. “As you have seen in anti-doping cases in Australia, there is a mandatory provisional suspension when you test positive. Our athletes sit out until such time as there is a case or an appeal to that.

“The World Anti-Doping Code is complicated, and everybody has a right to provide their evidence and have that tested, but unfortunately, whilst those processes take place, it does impact the credibility of the anti-doping program. If you want clean, fair sport, you have got to build trust and maintain it.

“It is unfortunate that we are going to go to yet another Games with a doping cloud and lack of clarity.”

Mack Horton refused to share a podium with Sun Yang at the 2019 world championships.Credit: Getty Images

Sharpe, a former Australian Federal Police assistant commissioner who led taskforce investigations into international drug cartels and other serious organised crime, was appointed chief executive of ASADA, the forerunner to Sport Integrity Australia, in 2017. At the time, reverberations from Russia’s doping program were still being felt across global sport.

He oversaw the dramatic expansion of his agency’s remit. It was given a broader investigative mandate across doping, child safety, corruption, match fixing and the nexus between sport and organised crime under a new, national sports integrity framework.

Speakinglast week, Sharpe reflected on the importance of the partnerships established between Sport Integrity Australia and domestic and international law enforcement and intelligence agencies and how this helped expose the involvement of organised crime in Australian sports ranging from soccer to table tennis.

Although Sport Integrity Australia was criticised for overzealous pursuit of both Jack and 800m runner Peter Bol in circumstances where neither was found to have cheated, Sharpe said Australia’s strict adherence to anti-doping rules enabled it to push for reform inside WADA.

Australia, through its membership on WADA committees, lobbied for changes to how the anti-doping system treats illicit drugs which don’t provide a performance benefit when taken outside of competition and hormones used in meat production and testing protocols for EPO.

Sport Integrity Australia has also followed USADA’s lead in providing investigative resources to help athletes who haven’t cheated demonstrate how a banned substance got into their body.

It is three years since an Australian athlete tested positive to a banned substance contained in a training supplement. In the year before Sport Integrity Australia campaigned against the use of unsafe supplements through education, importation restrictions and increased regulation, 17 Australian athletes served doping bans after taking the wrong energy drink or protein powder.

“There was no model in the world for doing all of this, bringing it together in the one place,” Sharpe said. “We had to write the handbook and we are still writing it. Have we made mistakes? Absolutely. But I think the strength is we have done it with government, law enforce[ment] and sport.”

Sharpe says two major problems within the anti-doping system are the complexity of the rules and the opaque nature of its processes. He says uncertainty surrounding the Chinese scandal is, in part, due to the difficulty all athletes face understanding how the system works.

“Athletes just want to know what the process is and what happens across the world,” he said. “There’s got to be simpler communication.”

Until there is, the message from athletes in Paris is likely to be blunt.

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