For all the tea and TMZ in China – doping a bitter pill to swallow as fawlty process towers over Olympics
China has cleared China of doping. Swim on.
Contamination from a pill? You’d have to be a dill.
Let me see if I have this right. China’s thorough investigation into China’s 23 positive drug tests via the Chinese doping regulator, CHINADA, before the Tokyo Olympics, found the Huayang Holiday Hotel’s kitchen vents, spice containers and sink drains, and those areas only, nothing in the salt shakers or atop chef’s hat, had traces of trimetazidine, known as TMZ, which ended up going down the gullets and into the systems of a small army of Chinese swimmers who subsequently failed doping controls.
When China pleaded contamination, the World Anti-Doping Agency WADA decided yep, no worries, sounds about right, swim on, without the usual protest to the Court of Arbitration for Sport. I must be the biggest dill of all because we know TMZ is a small, prescription-only heart medication that comes only as a plastic-coated pill. It’s not a powder you can sprinkle or spill across chef’s kitchen like a busted bag of cooking flour. Is the argument not like saying your Nurofen Zavance broke open and the powder then flew into your kitchen vents, sink drains and your basil jar? Only another Basil, surname Fawlty, one of the great dills, might believe it.
Apparently this is the way it played out. I apologise for my scepticism. Someone with a heart condition – CHINADA doesn’t know exactly who – in chef’s kitchen has decided to take his TMZ pill in the kitchen. Rather than popping it into his mouth, always a complicated task, of course, he’s dropped it with such force that it’s exploded like Krakatoa. TMZ straight into the spice containers. Over there in the drains, of course. Up in the air vents. And from there there’s been enough of the stuff to enter the blood stream of not one, not two, but 23 swimmers? How many folks in chef’s kitchen were on TMZ? I think I need some myself. A bitter pill to swallow, I suspect.
The Chinese team had gathered at heartbreak hotel in late December 2020, and early January 2021, for a training camp. It makes the blood boil and heavies the heart that three Olympic gold medals were won by these swimmers. Not that it will taint Olympic swimming at the Paris Games or anything of the sort. Surely they can’t be so grossly unlucky to have mass contaminations again. We’ll still assume every Chinese medallist in every sport is clean as a whistle. Here’s what I’ll be thinking every time China climbs the podium. Bravo! A win for the contamination nation! To suspect them of foul play with such a speckless history … you’d have to be the biggest dill of all.
Dirty little doping secrets are the worst area of sport. China’s positive tests came just six months before the Games. That’s not prime doping season, you dill. CHINADA’s 61-page report reckons China’s Ministry of Public Security found the traces in vents, spice containers and sink drains. Case closed! I reckon it’d be difficult to get the contents of a TMZ pill into those spots if you had a hundred tablets. As in, OK, mate, here’s TMZ. We need you to get it into the vents, spice containers and drains … and nowhere else. Go for your life. For all the tea and TMZ in China – I reckon I couldn’t do it if I tried.
WADA took a squiz at CHINADA’s explanation and agreed with it despite sending no researchers to the heartbreak hotel because of Covid restrictions. All 23 swimmers were cleared and the positive tests remained confidential until leaked on the weekend. TMZ is the same drug the infamous Sun Yang tested positive to. Just a coincidence, you dills.
Among the peeved are all sport lovers and Russia’s Winter Olympic skater Kamila Valieva. She tested positive for TMZ in 2022. Contamination is a common defence – see Richard Gasquet’s successful argument that he had cocaine in his system because a woman he was kissing at a nightclub had been taking it – but when China shockingly decided the Chinese swimmers were clean, WADA didn’t take it further. In stark difference to when it refused to let Russia clear Valieva, taking matters to the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS).
Because Valieva’s claim of contamination was deemed far-fetched. She claimed she ingested TMZ from a strawberry dessert lovingly made for her by her TMZ-taking grandfather. The court unlovingly threw out the claim but by then Valieva and the Russians had won gold in the teams event at Beijing. Victory has since been awarded to the United States and she’s suspended until next year. Perhaps Valieva should have claimed contamination was in grandpa’s kitchen vents, spice containers and sink drains, not his strawberry dessert. Poor old grandpa.
Fundamental questions were left unanswered by the Chinese. Which cook, chef, masterchef or kitchen hand had a prescription for TMZ, thereby explaining at least why it was in there? And if it was in the heartbreak hotel’s kitchen vents, spice containers and sink drains, and nowhere else, how did it then get into the swimmers’ systems when chef knew some of China’s best athletes were waiting for their tucker and expecting it to be free of performance-enhancing drugs? Would never have known under grandpa’s watch.
The Chinese claimed the small amount of TMZ in the swimmers’ systems wouldn’t have boosted performance anyway. This is also taking us as dills. The New York Times cited experts claiming it could “just as easily suggest that the test was performed at the tail end of the excretion period for a larger dose of the drug.”
WADA said the low concentrations was part of the reason for the blanket clearance to swim on. Since when has that been the case? A positive drug sample is a positive drug sample is a positive drug sample, big or small.
Of course, there’s no way a battery of positive Chinese drug tests would have been a PR disaster before the Tokyo Games, and just a year out from the Beijing Winter Games. It’s wonderful that China is trustworthy enough to have CHINADA investigating alleged Chinese drug cheats. There’s nothing wrong with allowing major Olympic nations to ensure their own athletes are clean, of course. It’s an honour system … but at the risk of sounding a total and utter dill, it might be time to change the system. You couldn’t get a more direct conflict of interest if Sun Yang was investigating Sun Yang.
I’m sure Basil was talking about CHINADA when he said, “I’d love to meet them. I could do with a bloody laugh!”
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