IIt’s been a week since the New York Times and German TV channel ARD broke the news that 23 Chinese swimmers had tested positive for trace amounts of the banned drug TMZ on the eve of the last Olympics, and the public has taken notice. The ripples seen are just the visible tip of the emotional wave that runs through the sport.
A larger part is beneath the surface, where there is widespread anger, irritation and disillusionment with the way the 23 athletes were allowed to compete in the Games, after an investigation by national doping agency Chinaada found the results were caused by kitchen contamination.
Three of them ended up winning gold medals. One of them, Wang Shun, was only 0.28 seconds ahead of Duncan Scott in the 200m individual medley. The two are favorites again this year. After the incident was revealed, Scott’s friend and teammate James Guy posted on X: “Give Slam his gold now” (Slam is Scott’s nickname).
Scott was one of the swimmers to take a public stance on doping before, when he refused to shake hands with another Chinese swimmer, Sun Yang, at the 2019 world championships as he faced a doping case of his own. There are rumors that there will be more podium protests in Paris.
It may get hotter. Sun Yang had just completed a separate four-year ban after serving a three-month ban for testing positive, according to TMZ. He has said he wants to compete in the Olympics. He missed the Chinese trials this week, but as long as he can catch up with the qualifying time (he said he is training every day), he will be eligible to be selected at the discretion of the Chinese Football Association.
Gay is one of the few athletes willing to say publicly what many swimmers say only in private. Sound travels through the water, so you don’t have to strain your ears to hear whispers on the pool deck. Athletes who had been told all their lives to be strictly responsible for everything about their bodies suddenly realized they were dealing with swimmers who were allowed to compete despite testing positive for TMZ. Both China Anti-Doping Agency and World Anti-Doping Agency were satisfied that their results were below what could be considered an improvement – meaning intentional doping was “impossible”, Chinese authorities said. However, questions remain about how exactly the contamination occurs.
Guy’s teammate Adam Peaty also weighed in, though his own comments about X were directed at and anti-establishment handling of the case. Peaty publicly supported Scott’s protests in 2019.
The story involves not just athletes’ shaken confidence in WADA’s ability to police their sport or World Swimming’s ability to govern the sport, but also about the long-standing, ongoing instability between the Chinese swimming team and competitors from around the world. Relationship. This goes back to the late 1980s, before most swimmers were even born. That’s when the East German government sent a team of three coaches who had worked in East Germany’s state-sponsored doping system to China to help establish a new high-level training program.
Over the next decade, Chinese swimmers won an unprecedented number of medals at major events but also failed an unprecedented number of drug tests. In the 1990s, more than half of all doping cases recorded in elite swimming competitions involved Chinese swimmers. Seven of them competed in one competition, the 1994 Asian Games in Hiroshima. Enough to supply the entire Chinese team, but only one swimmer and one coach were punished.
This goes beyond isolated doping cases in other countries, which have been limited to individual athletes or training groups. Alarmed by the scale of the problem, the World Swimming Coaches Association began asking the sport’s governing body, then FINA, to take action. Fina is hopelessly incompetent at best and repeatedly refutes questionable advice. WSCA members were told they were “paranoid” and described as “troublemakers”. Chinese officials accuse them of hatred and racism, hypocrisy and ignorance of Chinese swimming culture.
The same arguments are expected to be made again in the coming months, with particular focus on the therapeutic use exemption widely used by Western athletes, which allows taking medically necessary performance-enhancing drugs. Australian coach Denis Cottrell, who is based in China, has given interviews to explain that outsiders don’t understand the team’s culture. This may be true. As bioethicist Maxwell Mehlman writes in ” the price of perfection: “In effect, China has replaced East Germany as the target of Western condemnation of state-sponsored doping.” Melman writes that it is easy for Western media to portray China as a “big red machine.”
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Cottrell also spoke of the fear and sacrifices his swimmers must make to avoid eating contaminated food. “Everyone who comes to China knows that pollution is a problem,” he said. “It’s an unfortunate aspect of being here…I’m happy to say I absolutely support my swimmers and take issue with any orchestrated suggestions.”
At the same time, the Chinese media did not report on these cases at all. In the 1990s, there were frequent reports that athletes who tested positive were simply injured. Swimmers often completely ignore the fact that they have violated doping regulations because they blindly follow coaches and medical staff. The lack of information meant they were almost surprised to find the wider community so suspicious. Professors Pu Haozhou and Michael Giardina convincingly argue that the Chinese authorities actively instigate this persecution complex: “The importance of the Olympic Games to China is no longer limited to presenting the image of a ‘winner’ to the world: it is paradoxical Yes, it also plays a role in portraying the image of a ‘winner’.
In 2012, 16-year-old Chinese swimmer Ye Shiwen won the gold medal in the women’s 400m individual medley with a world record time of 4 minutes and 28.43 seconds. That was one second faster than her original time and five points faster than her pre-race personal best. No one had ever seen a performance like hers in the final 100 meters of freestyle, and Ye’s performance was all the talk in the Olympic Village that night. There were a lot of people out there who were happy to talk about it, but only one, an American coach named John Leonard, was willing to go public with it.
He told the Guardian he thought Ye’s performance was simply incredible. “I use the word in its exact meaning. At this moment, for many people who swim, this is unbelievable. Ye denied doing anything wrong and called Leonard “unprofessional.” He was mocked on social media for loudly expressing the same skepticism of other coaches and athletes. In the end, nearly 150 athletes at the London Olympics were found guilty of doping violations, and 42 of them were stripped of their medals. Ye is not one of them.
Leonard was accused of hypocrisy, racism and bullying a 16-year-old girl. But his target wasn’t really Ye. He spoke from years of painful experience in the sport. He fulfilled the vocal promise he made in the 1980s, when he watched with skeptical silence as East Germans systematically undermined his movement. He was part of a generation that fought, but ultimately lost, to make the sport strictly clean. They feel frustrated by what they see as a system made up of too many weak and conflicted managers working for opaque and unaccountable governing bodies.
That was the last generation. Worryingly, this latest one is starting to feel the same way.
