China’s swim team tested 200 times in 10 days before Paris Olympics

Garance Limouzy July 23, 2024

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China’s swim team tested 200 times in 10 days before Paris Olympics

As the Olympic Games are about to start, frustration is mounting around China’s swim team, recently involved in a doping scandal. While other countries are demanding increased scrutiny, China is protesting against what it considers excessive testing, with some alleging that the Chinese swimmers have been tested 200 times in the 10 days since their arrival in France.

In 2021, 23 Chinese swimmers tested positive for the heart medication trimetazidine (TMZ), a banned doping substance. Eleven of these swimmers have been chosen to compete in the Paris Olympic Games.

The swimmers were cleared by the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA), which accepted the explanation provided by the swim team. The athletes claimed that they had been unwillingly contaminated when they ate hotel food that contained the substance. WADA allowed the swimmers to compete at Tokyo 2021, where two of them won Olympic gold medals.

The story only recently came to light when The New York Times published it, leading WADA to launch an independent investigation to see if it?had handled the case properly. This story, however, eroded trust in WADA and general anti-doping efforts in sports. Travis Tygart, CEO of the United States Anti-Doping Agency, said the world and Chinese anti-doping associations had “secretly, until now, swept these positives under the carpet.”

“Athletes should have been banned” says Germany

The German Olympic chief, Thomas Weikert, demanded more answers. Weikert explained, “We in Germany are also a bit outraged about what’s going on. From our point of view, the athletes should have been banned in the first place; that’s what the rules say. We are not satisfied with the whole thing.”

200 tests in 10 days

This scandal led to the decision to drug-test Chinese swimmers participating in the Paris Olympics twice as much as athletes from other nations. Allegedly, 200 tests have been performed in the 10 days following their arrival in Paris. A nutritionist from the swimming team claimed that athletes were being tested from 6 a.m., at an average of 5 to 7 times per athlete. The nutritionist expressed his discontent on social media in a post that has since been deleted, raising waves of outrage among his Chinese followers.