Following the revelation in April that 23 elite Chinese swimmers had tested positive for a banned substance months before the last Summer Olympics, China and the global anti-doping authority vigorously defended their decisions to allow them to compete in the 2021 Games, they insisted. no doping used.
But when they made those claims, China and the anti-doping authority were both aware that three of those 23 swimmers had tested positive for another performance-enhancing drug several years earlier and had not been publicly identified and suspended in that case either. This is evident from a secret report reviewed by The New York Times.
In both cases, China claimed that the swimmers had unknowingly ingested the banned substances, a statement viewed with considerable skepticism by some anti-doping experts. The two incidents add to long-standing suspicion among rival athletes about what they see as a pattern of Chinese doping and the unwillingness or inability of the global authority, the World Anti-Doping Agency, to deal with it.
