With two months left until the U.S. Olympic Swimming Games and three months until the 2024 Olympics, the question at stake in international swimming is whether America's Katie Ledecky or France's Leon Marchand will be in Paris. It's not just about winning medals. this:
How a banned prescription heart drug, available only in pill form, found its way into a hotel kitchen and somehow managed to be ingested by 23 elite Chinese swimmers. All of them had been warned for years not to ingest what they were about to ingest. Don't you trust me?
Do we believe it really happened? And if you don't believe it actually happened, we watched in real time as swimming's worst doping scandal in at least a generation engulfed the sport, dominating the first week of the Summer Olympics. There will be.
This weekend, the New York Times and German public broadcaster ARD reported that all 23 Chinese swimmers had tested positive for the exact same banned substance, trimetazidine (TMZ). Trimetazidine (TMZ) is the drug Russian figure skater Kamila Valieva was found to have ingested, but she was allowed to continue competing and possibly win a medal at the 2021 Tokyo Olympics. You can also.
Does such a thing ever happen? That's because the World Anti-Doping Agency fought for months to bring Valieva to justice when she gave a strikingly similar excuse for the small amounts the swimmers apparently ingested. Because it focused on drugs and clearly accepted the China story.
In a story that continues more than two years after the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics, a Russian teenager claims that a strawberry dessert made by her grandfather was laced with drugs and that when she ate it, she reported it to her grandfather's TMZ. He said he was exposed.
WADA didn't buy it — and honestly, who would? The Court of Arbitration for Sport also suspended Valieva for four years and stripped her of her Olympic results.
We'll be comparing and contrasting these two cases for some time, and Valieva and the Russians may as well. They are appealing her punishment, leading some to wonder if WADA's decision in her China case will now be in her favor.
One important question has emerged. WADA shared information with Valieva's lawyers that in similar circumstances (23 Chinese swimmers) positive drug tests were kept secret from the public and the swimmers were not suspended or disqualified. Did you do it?
So far, no one in a position of authority has been willing to answer that question.
Another problem is percolating. Is the decision not to suspend or disqualify Chinese swimmers final, or is there an opportunity to reopen the case?
“The statute of limitations is not yet over,” U.S. Anti-Doping Agency CEO Travis Tygart said in a text message Sunday. “Certainly, if, as a result of an actual thorough investigation, new evidence is discovered or irregularities in the defense of the Chinese swimmers are discovered, then yes, they could easily be prosecuted. Whatever the outcome, it can and should be investigated and prosecuted by an independent prosecutor to provide some justice for clean athletes.”
Also on Sunday, German Interior Minister Nancy Feser called for an independent investigation into the incident.
One of the reasons this story resonates throughout the swimming and Olympic worlds is that, sadly, the history of doping and international swimming goes back a long way. Most notably, East Germany stole Olympic and world medals from hundreds of random swimmers around the world from the 1960s to the 1980s, while forcing many women to take steroids for years. It ruined the swimmer's life.
Well, another scandal.
“My heart goes out to the athletes around the world who may have been affected by this potential cover-up, who may have lost podium moments, economic opportunities, and memories with their families that will never be replaced,” Tygart said. Their hearts are broken. They have been deeply and painfully betrayed by the system, all of whom used the dirty tricks to cover up the positive test and suppress the voices of the courageous whistleblowers. must be held responsible.”
China and WADA thought the case was over. But the swimming world knows this may just be the beginning.
