What to Know About the Chinese Swimming Doping Scandal

As swimming events unfold in La Defense Arena in Nanterre, questions about doping among Olympic athletes, particularly from China, continue.

On July 30, the New York Times reported that two Chinese swimmers, one of whom is competing at the Paris Olympics, tested positive for an anabolic steroid, a banned performance enhancing substance, in 2022 but were allowed to continue competing without sanctions after Chinese anti-doping authorities cleared them.

It’s just the latest revelation of apparent doping violations that the global athletic community are starting to question. Just months after the 2024 World Championships in swimming, a Times investigation revealed that 23 Chinese swimmers from the Tokyo Olympics in 2021 had tested positive for a banned substance, trimetazidine (TMZ), at a training camp months before the Olympics. Chinese anti-doping officials determined that the positive findings resulted from contamination of food the swimmers ate and did not sanction or suspend any of the athletes. The World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA), which oversees clean sport at major international events like World Championships and the Olympics, agreed with the Chinese group and the athletes were allowed to compete in Tokyo.

In June, the Times reported that in previous years, three of those athletes had tested positive for another banned substance, clenbuterol, which has similar effects to that of a steroid by boosting muscle.

The incidents raised questions from the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency (USADA) and American lawmakers about the effectiveness of WADA in establishing and enforcing rules about clean sport. In June, WADA responded to the Times investigation, calling its findings “sensationalist and inaccurate” and characterizing the U.S. calls for action as “highly charged, politically motivated criticism.” The agency went on to cite examples of food-based contamination cases in other countries. For its part, at a press conference in Beijing in April, a China anti-doping agency official said the allegations were “fake news and not factual” and said in a statement reported in the Times that it determined that no doping violations were committed by its athletes and therefore it could not respond to any allegations without the athletes’ permission.

In July, the White House and USADA called for WADA to provide a more detailed account of the circumstances behind the positive tests, and how the agency reached its decision that the tests were the result of contamination.

Those are only the latest volley in a long-standing back and forth between WADA and clean athletes to ensure that athletes are competing on a level playing field. Many athletes believe the agency doesn’t have the impact that it should in detecting and punishing those who use performance-enhancing drugs. Even if every athlete and every substance isn’t caught, stricter sanctions and immediate suspensions while investigations take place could go a long way toward discouraging doping, they say. Because of WADA’s decision not to punish or suspend any of the 23 Chinese swimmers testing positive in Tokyo, nearly a dozen are scheduled to race in Paris.

Read More: Over a Third of China’s Paris Olympics Swimming Roster Tied to Doping Scandal

When asked about the uncertainty over the Chinese swimmers, Katie Ledecky, an 11-time Olympic medalist, said in Paris before the competition started: “I hope everyone here is competing clean this week. That really matters. It also matters [if they] were training clean. Everyone has heard what athletes think. They want transparency. They want answers to questions that still remain. We are here to race, and we will race whoever is in the lane next to us. So we hope that people follow their own rules—that applies to now and into the future. We want to see some change in the future so you don’t have to ask us that question.”

On June 25, swimming legend Michael Phelps and four-time Olympian Allison Schmitt testified before Congress to urge governmental sanctions against WADA, since the U.S. is the largest government supporter of the anti-doping agency (about half of the agency’s funding comes from the International Olympic Committee and half from various governments). “It is clear to me that any attempts of reform at WADA have fallen short, and there are still deeply rooted systemic problems that prove detrimental to the integrity of international sports and athletes’ right to fair competition, time and time again,” Phelps said.

Travis Tygart, president of USADA, noted that China’s contributions to WADA have increased, prompting Sen. Kathy Castor (D-Fla.) to question during the hearing: “Did payment from the PRC influence their decision making?”

In a statement responding to the hearing, WADA suggested USADA was trying to “distract from its own failings” and get the U.S. government to divert funding from WADA to USADA. WADA criticized the hearing as “filled with the sort of emotional and political rhetoric that makes headlines but in fact does nothing constructive to strengthen the global anti-doping system.” The organization decried the “politicization” of anti-doping and said it was “being dragged into a much broader struggle between two superpowers. As an independent and largely technical organization, WADA has no mandate to be part of those political debates.”

The main banned substance in question, trimetazidine, is a heart medication for angina that works by improving blood flow to the heart and enhances the body’s ability to use oxygen, which can heighten endurance. It is used outside of the U.S. but not approved in the U.S. The drug last made doping headlines during the Beijing Olympics in 2022, when Russian figure skater Kamila Valieva tested positive for the medication, and Russian officials allowed her to compete after concluding that she unknowingly ingested some of her grandfather’s medication, also in a case of contamination. An independent Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) concluded that Valieva’s positive sample, collected at a competition prior to the Olympics, should have disqualified her from the Beijing Games. Her scores were eliminated from the women’s figure skating event as well as the team event, where her removal pushed Team USA to gold. On July 24, the CAS rejected an appeal filed by the Russian Olympic Committee and the U.S. team is scheduled to receive its gold medal in Paris in a special ceremony on Aug. 7.

The other performance enhancer that was reportedly found in the three swimmers’ samples in years prior to the Tokyo Olympics is clenbuterol, a drug that is prescribed for asthma to open airways—but not in the U.S. (where it’s only approved for horses). In a statement posted on the agency’s website on June 14, WADA said it was aware of clenbuterol’s use in agriculture, and the “pervasive issue” of “positive sample[s] from an athlete who consumes meat from animals treated in that way.” WADA maintained that the amounts found in the athletes’ samples was six to 50 times lower than current anti-doping minimum levels.

In the larger case involving 23 of the country’s swimmers, both WADA and the international swimming federation World Aquatics agreed that the samples were contaminated. Oliver Rabin, senior director of science and medicine for WADA, said in a statement, “We concluded that there was no concrete basis to challenge the asserted contamination.”

Tygart said the U.S. is turning to legal action to compel greater accountability by WADA, including leveraging a law that provides extra territorial jurisdiction to enforce WADA rules even outside of the U.S. and outside of U.S. players. “Congress and the President at the time saw it was necessary as a means to protect clean sport and the investments made in those sports by the U.S. and U.S. companies,” he says.

Other organizations, including the International Testing Agency that was created as an independent testing group in 2016, after another Russian doping scandal, are also helping to raise questions about doping violations that go unsanctioned. In Paris, ITA reported a positive test for steroids from an Iraqi judo athlete, which led to his suspension from the Olympics.

But it’s clear that existing rules are being followed and enforced in a haphazard way, with some countries taking them more seriously than others. Tygart said USADA has followed the rules and made difficult decisions to strip medals from high profile athletes, including Lance Armstrong and Marion Jones, who tested positive for banned substances. “It’s a difficult decision but it’s what the job requires,” he says. “We at USADA have not changed, but WADA definitely has changed. I think if WADA got good at its job, they are worried that the International Olympic Committee (IOC) might pull funding from them but because if they get too good at their jobs, in cases that potentially have a negative impact on a sport if the depths of cheating are exposed, the IOC would get upset and not fund them any more.”

The solution, he says, is “we’ve got to stop the foxes from guarding the hen house,” noting that many leaders of sports governing bodies also hold positions with WADA. “In USADA, no one who sits on our board can also serve in any capacity for a sports organization,” says Tygart. “The current WADA system is a structure set up to fail.”

As the Paris Games opened, the issue was front and center as the IOC added an amendment to its awarding of the 2034 Winter Olympics to Salt Lake City. The change gave IOC the right to move the Olympics to another location if the U.S. did not show full support of the WADA system—likely related to the U.S.’s recent calling for a full accounting of the agency’s actions around the Chinese cases.

The integrity of the system is at stake, and for now, it relies not on the agencies set up to monitor clean sport but on whistleblowers who come forward with evidence of wrongdoing. “People want WADA to be effective, to do the job they are paid to do, and clean athletes expect that,” says Tygart. “Unfortunately, that’s not been the case.”

“We are following all the rules,” Ledecky said. “All that we ask is that those rules are being applied fairly and consistently to everyone.”