Anti-doping agency acknowledges concern over use of tainted food as excuse

The global anti-doping regulator disclosed Tuesday that it is investigating why athletes in China and other countries who are testing positive for banned drugs are escaping discipline through claims that they have unwittingly ingested the performance-enhancing substances through food.

The statement from the World Anti-Doping Agency came after The New York Times reported earlier Tuesday on a previously undisclosed case in which two elite Chinese swimmers who tested positive for a powerful steroid in 2022 were cleared late last year after their country’s anti-doping authority blamed contaminated hamburgers.

It was the third incident in recent years in which China blamed food contamination for positive tests among members of its national swimming team.

In its statement Tuesday, the World Anti-Doping Agency, known as WADA, revealed that at the same time it was looking into how the two swimmers had tested positive, it was also examining the previously undisclosed cases of two other Chinese athletes in different sports — shooting and BMX bike riding — who tested positive in early 2023 for trace amounts of the same banned drug, metandienone.

China’s anti-doping regulator conducted tests that discovered metandienone in dozens of meat samples in the country, WADA said, and ultimately cleared the two other athletes as well as the two swimmers of doping.

After the Chinese investigation, WADA said, it began its own inquiry early this year “to assess the circumstances, scale and risk of meat contamination with metandienone in China and other countries.”

That investigation, it said, is continuing.

“Based on the number of cases, clearly there is an issue of contamination in several countries around the world,” the agency said. “WADA is generally concerned about the number of cases that are being closed without sanction when it is not possible to challenge the contamination theory successfully” in the court system that governs sports.

“There have been many cases of positive tests that were eventually closed without sanction as no-fault violations, sometimes with unusual methods of contamination,” the statement said.

WADA said the problem extended beyond China to countries including the United States, where, it said, there have been several cases in recent months involving “highly intricate contamination scenarios” that were accepted as legitimate reason not to punish athletes. It did not provide any details.

The admission from WADA — which is supposed to serve as a backstop when countries fail to properly police their athletes — was a change in its tone and posture after months in which it has denied that positive tests were being mishandled.

The disclosures came at a time when WADA and the entire global anti-doping system are under intensifying scrutiny. The Times reported in April that 23 Chinese swimmers who tested positive for a different performance-enhancing drug months before the Tokyo Olympics in 2021 had also been cleared of doping after China’s anti-doping regulator concluded that they had unwittingly consumed the substance through food at a hotel where they were staying.

On Capitol Hill, a bipartisan group from the House and the Senate ramped up its pressure on the agency, holding a news conference Tuesday to unveil legislation that would give the United States more leverage over WADA by allowing the White House to withhold funding from the agency. The United States, through a congressional appropriation, contributes more money each year — expected to be about $3.6 million in 2024 — to the agency’s roughly $50 million annual budget than any other country.

“Our message is simple: We will not be silenced for trying to promote fair play,” said Sen. Marsha Blackburn, R-Tenn., who is one of the bill’s sponsors.

She added that there was deep unease in Washington over a recent effort by the International Olympic Committee and WADA to press the United States to stop a federal investigation into how the positive tests of the 23 swimmers in the previous case were handled. The IOC last week awarded the 2034 Winter Olympics to Salt Lake City only on the condition that the United States not undermine WADA’s authority over doping cases.

Blackburn was joined on the call by Rep. John Moolenaar, R-Mich., the chair of the House select committee on China. The two other lawmakers behind the legislation were Democrats: Sen. Chris Van Hollen of Maryland, who is the chair of a Senate appropriations subcommittee, and Rep. Raja Krishnamoorthi of Illinois, who serves on the House China committee.

The controversy around China has led to scrutiny over the entire global anti-doping system, and in particular how much faith is placed in national bodies to police their own athletes.

Just before the Olympics, questions were raised over how British officials were able to clear Jade Jones, a double Olympic taekwondo champion, to try to secure a third title in Paris after she refused to provide a doping sample to drug testers. Such a refusal would typically result in a ban. She was cleared because of “exceptional circumstances” that have never been fully revealed.

Katie Ledecky, an 11-time Olympic medalist, said that before swimming the preliminaries of the 1,500 freestyle Tuesday morning, she had read the Times article about the two Chinese swimmers being cleared on the basis of food contamination.

“I think I’ve made my thoughts pretty clear,” said Ledecky, who has previously expressed disappointment about a lack of transparency by anti-doping authorities and the potential that clean swimmers might be competing against rivals who use banned substances. “It’s disappointing.”

Ledecky could end up swimming against as many as two Chinese athletes who tested positive in recent years when she competes in the 4x200 freestyle relay Thursday.

The Team USA Athletes Commission released a statement saying it was “extremely angered and discouraged” by the latest report of positive tests among Chinese athletes and the decisions by WADA and swimming’s global organization not to take action.

“As our athletes currently compete on the largest global stage in Paris, they deserve the opportunity to do so with the knowledge that the competition is fair and in accordance with the rules,” the statement said.

Three of the Chinese swimmers competing at the Paris Games who tested positive in 2021 for a banned substance — a heart medication — but were cleared on the basis of food contamination said in interviews with the Times that they had not doped and pointed to their being cleared by anti-doping regulators.

“We are clean,” said Yang Junxuan, one of three swimmers who the Times reported also tested positive for a different banned substance several years earlier. “The results we are having now are the results of our scientific method of training.”

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

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