Why US politicians are picking on Chinese Olympic swimmers
Aug 8, 2024
As with Washington’s routine attempts to challenge all things Chinese as well as global multilateral agencies, its row with the World Anti-Doping Agency is par for the course.
Despite the excessive scrutiny and outrageous record numbers of testing, some sour grapes competitors, commentators and coaches still insinuate, with zero evidence, that Chinese swimmers at the Paris Olympics could be doping.
According to World Aquatics, the international governing body for swimming, China’s 31 swimmers in Paris have been tested an average of 21 times by various anti-doping agencies since the start of this year, compared with six times for their American rivals, according to an NBC News report.
But that’s not all. From last year, Qin Haiyang had the dubious distinction of being the world’s most tested swimmer at 46 times. Others most tested include Zhang Yufei (43 times), Li Bingjie (42), Yu Yiting (31), Liu Yaxin (29), Pan Zhanle (29) and Yang Junxuan (27). They cleared all the tests. If that’s not clean, I don’t know what is. Even Hong Kong’s Siobhan Haughey was tested 17 times.
Many of their Chinese fans have cried foul.
They may be right, but I am glad the swimmers were excessively tested. Imagine what those self-righteous – or is it racist? – Western critics would say if the Chinese swimmers were only tested with the same frequency as others. I can just see the headlines!
Otherwise, Pan’s training team must be doping geniuses. Having passed so many tests, he smashed his own world record in the men’s 100-metre freestyle. Some prominent people in the sport still went online to hint that he must have doped.
You just can’t win, even if you do win – when you are Chinese.
The New York Times got the row rolling in April when it claimed in an exclusive that 23 Chinese swimmers tested positive for a banned heart drug called trimetazidine (TMZ) before the last Tokyo Games. Eleven of them would compete in Paris.
In all cases from four years before, there were only trace amounts consistent with food contamination. Besides human treatment, TMZ is a type of steroid hormone that is found in lean beef and pork. After repeated testing, examinations and re-examinations of the results, the World Anti-Doping Agency (Wada) eventually accepted the food contamination explanation and cleared the swimmers.
Yet, the Anglo-American mainstream media keep referring to “the Chinese doping scandal” when there was never one, except the one they themselves have conjured up and now is being exploited by politicians in the US Congress.
Being exposed to contaminated food is hardly unique to the Chinese, given the sensitivity of the tests.
“Based on the number of cases, clearly there is an issue of contamination in several countries around the world,” Wada said. “Apart from China, in particular, there have been several of these cases in the United States in the past few months alone, where highly intricate contamination scenarios were accepted.”
For example, US sprinter Erriyon Knighton, who was tested positive in March, was cleared to compete in Paris. Nevertheless, the Times story started what has often been described as a diplomatic row between Wada and American authorities, not just in sports but the US Congress itself.
Talk about politicising sports!
Last month, a bipartisan bill – called “Restoring Confidence in the World Anti-Doping Agency Act of 2024” – was introduced in both the US House of Representatives and the Senate. If passed, as is likely, the Office of National Drug Control Policy – better known as the drug tsar – under the White House will have permanent authority to reduce or revoke US funding for Wada.
At about the same time, the FBI and the US Justice Department opened a criminal probe into how the Chinese swimmers had avoided sanctions. They could do that because – as part of America’s typical extraterritorial overreach – a 2020 law gives the US jurisdiction over doping matters anywhere in the world so long as the sporting events involve American athletes. And that basically means all important international sporting events.
I wonder if some hapless Chinese swimmer who happened to pass through Vancouver’s international airport might not end up being arrested for extradition to the US for having eaten a TMZ-contaminated burger.
If these are not threats and intimidation against Wada and the International Olympic Committee (IOC), it’s hard to know what they are.
The US has a long habit of targeting international authorities and undermining international law. It has blocked appointments to the appeal panel of the World Trade Organisation (WTO), thus paralysing the whole legal process. It once sanctioned the now-former chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC) for launching a formal investigation into alleged war crimes committed by the US military in Afghanistan and has threatened the current ICC chief prosecutor with sanctions for trying to arrest Israel’s prime minister and defence minister for war crimes and crimes against humanity as related to the country’s war in Gaza.
This is Washington’s rules-based system in action, as opposed to actual international law and norms and their systems of global multilateral agencies and authorities. America’s actions against Wada and the IOC, not to say the Chinese Olympic authorities, are par for the course.
“It’s highly incorrect that one country tries to impose jurisdiction on the anti-doping decisions to the rest of the world,” Wada president Witold Banka said in a rebuttal late last month.
In an official statement, Wada said: “The politicisation of Chinese swimming continues with this latest attempt by the media in the United States to imply wrongdoing on the part of Wada and the broader anti-doping community. As we have seen over recent months, Wada has been unfairly caught in the middle of geopolitical tensions between superpowers but has no mandate to participate in that.”
The IOC, which set up Wada, is fighting back. In an unusual move, it has added an amendment in the host city contract for the 2034 Winter Games in Salt Lake City in Utah that would allow it to terminate the deal “in cases where the supreme authority of Wada” is not respected. It also requires Utah officials to lobby for an end to the FBI and Justice Department probe.
Predictably, some US legislators have accused the IOC and Wada of blackmail. In this case though, it’s pretty clear who is really blackmailing whom. In any case, the added contractual condition will not affect the Summer Games in Los Angeles in 2028. So American sports officials, politicians and media hacks will have plenty of time and opportunities to cook up more “scandals” and make trouble for everyone, but especially the Chinese.
Republished from South China Morning Post, August 06, 2024
Alex Lo has been a Post columnist since 2012, covering major issues affecting Hong Kong and the rest of China. A journalist for 25 years, he has worked for various publications in Hong Kong and Toronto as a news reporter and editor. He has also lectured in journalism at the University of Hong Kong.
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