As the 2024 Paris Summer Olympics approach, new allegations of Chinese swimmers using performance enhancement drugs at the 2021 Tokyo Olympics are appearing. Team USA is calling for China’s medals to be rescinded and Team Britain is calling for a lifetime ban of the swimmers involved in the doping scandal.
The 2021 doping accusations are only now becoming public knowledge.
According to The New York Times, there were five events in the 2021 Games where Chinese swimmers who tested positive won medals — three of them being gold.
China said a banned substance “accidentally” ended up in dozens of its swimmers’ systems prior to the 2021 Games, however, the United States is calling it a cover-up and blatant cheating.
The World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA), which is in charge of keeping the Olympics “clean,” is taking China’s side, and threatening the U.S. with legal action for casting doubt on its previous investigation.
Seven months prior to the 2021 Olympics, the positive tests were investigated by Chinese officials who oversee drug testing in their athletes. Officials concluded the swimmers did not purposefully take the drug, and that it was ingested in small amounts from “environmental contamination.”
China provided WADA with its finding, who in turn said there was “no evidence to challenge China’s version of events.”
The agency closed the case without a public announcement over the positive tests, and China’s swimmers faced no suspensions or disqualifications.
The U.S. Anti-Doping Agency (USADA) criticized the world officials, and called the decisions “egregious failures.”
In response, WADA said it has previously accepted similar claims from the U.S. that some of its athletes were exposed to performance drugs through environmental contamination. The agency said the false allegations against WADA are defamatory.
Team USA swimmer Paige Madden — whose freestyle relay team came in second to China — said she feels “cheated” and wants “a reallocation of medals to be considered.”
Team Britain Olympic swimmer James Guy called for the swimmers involved to be banned from the Games for life.