The World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) held a press conference , which attempted to answer questions that arose after the publication of the scandal surrounding 23 top Chinese swimmers who tested positive for trimetazidine, but did not suffer any punishment and went to the Tokyo Olympics. Sport correspondent talks about how officials from WADA did it.
The scandal, we recall, erupted late last week after the New York Times and ARD reported that 23 leading Chinese swimmers tested positive for trimetazidine seven months before the Tokyo Olympics. The same substance was found in the body of Russian figure skater Kamila Valieva, and WADA took all measures to achieve the maximum penalty for her through the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) — a four-year ban. In the case of swimmers from China, WADA believed in a strange legend about the drug accidentally getting into the athletes’ samples through the kitchen of the hotel where they lived, and did not demand any sanctions. Moreover, this story would have remained a secret if it had not been leaked to the press.
The opening statement by WADA President Witold Banka basically repeated the organization’s already issued press release. He said that at all stages of the case involving 23 Chinese swimmers testing positive for trimetazisine, WADA acted according to the rules, and if history repeated itself, his office would not do anything new. WADA General Counsel Ross Wenzel noted that the version of accidental ingestion of the substance into the athletes’ bodies looked most likely from the very beginning, and the chances of winning the case in CAS in the event of a protest against the decision of the Chinese Anti-Doping Agency (Chinada) not to punish the swimmers were close to zero.
- Why weren't the Chinese swimmers suspended after they were found to be doping?
WADA's response was that it was not within its authority to do so. When information about positive doping tests was received by the organization — by the way, with a delay of more than two months, which WADA also calmly “swallowed”, accepting the excuse of a pandemic, the agency did not demand any suspension. And after that, in June, a verdict was made about the athletes’ innocence, with which the organization agreed. At the same time, the rules of the World Anti-Doping Code say that suspension — even if it should indeed be imposed not by WADA, but by the national anti-doping agency — is in any case mandatory.
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“If the Chinese Anti-Doping Agency did not do this, it should have been appealed,” emphasized the head of the Russian Anti-Doping Agency (RUSADA) Veronika Loginova in a commentary for. — We hear endlessly that the Russian system is not trustworthy. However, we absolutely strictly follow all the requirements of the standards — we suspend athletes in cases where the code requires it, and if the disciplinary anti-doping committee makes a different decision, we file an appeal.”
- Why was the information about the positive samples of Chinese swimmers not made public, as required by the World Anti-Doping Code?
WADA said that, as with the previous issue, Chinada should have published information about positive athletes' samples. At the same time, Wenzel emphasized that if there was no anti-doping violation, then publication is not mandatory. However, the official forgot to add that if you really want to, then the details of anti-doping cases can be published, and nothing will happen for it. Thus, the International Testing Agency (ITA) disclosed information on Valieva's case at the Beijing Olympics several days after the result of her doping test became known — and did not even look at her status as a “protected person” due to her age of 15 . They referred to “increased public interest” — and okay.
- How could trimetazidine even appear in the kitchen of a Chinese hotel?
There is no answer to this question in the Chinada report, which WADA believed entirely. Moreover, it says that traces of trimetazidine were found only two months after the positive samples were submitted. To which Nick Butler, a former journalist for the portal Inside The Games, now working with the famous German reporter Hajo Seppelt, noted — has the kitchen really not been washed all this time? However, WADA simply repeated that the agency has no reason to doubt the veracity of Chinada’s conclusions.
- Finally, the most important question is why WADA believed the explanations of the Chinese side and did not believe Valieva, who has exactly the same insignificant trace Trimetazidine in the sample was explained by accidental exposure through a strawberry dessert prepared by her grandfather?
Here, WADA decided that the best defense is an attack, and stated that the concentration of trimetazidine in Valieva’s body was higher than that of Chinese swimmers. But — firstly, not by much: everything is still close to the detection threshold of the existing method, as stated in the CAS documents. And secondly, according to the code, any amount of trimetazidine in a sample is a reason to open a case.
Well, then WADA officials repeated the thesis that the accidental release of the drug into the Chinese samples is evidenced by the fact that some of them were retested — and the tests gave a negative result. But — firstly, not everything that WADA recognizes. And secondly, in any case, this only means that trimetazidine in the sample was contained on the verge of the detection threshold. And there is not a single reason to reject the version that these could be residual traces after deliberate use some time before the competition. And if we talk about the version about Valieva’s grandfather’s dessert, it is completely unclear why it is worse than the story of trimetazidine scattered throughout the kitchen of a Chinese hotel (which, by the way, is available in capsules and is sold by prescription).
WADA also objected that trimetazidine manufacturers surveyed by the organization reported that it is useless for athletes in small concentrations. But then another question arises — if this drug does not help in small quantities in a cyclic sport, why did WADA decide that it gives an advantage in complex coordination figure skating?
At a press conference, WADA rejected suspicions that with China , which annually transfers considerable sums to the organization’s budget, simply did not want to get involved. They threatened legal consequences for both journalists and experts who leave “politicized” comments on this scandal. But it seems that Banka and the company are still in deep trouble — and it will not be easy to wash off, to put it mildly, extremely strange inaction in the doping scandal.
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