The World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) warned athletes preparing to play at the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics this week that China allows the meat industry to use a steroid on animals that could result in a positive test for banned substances if a person eats that animal.
The organization encouraged athletes to be cautious in choosing meat to consume and to stick to products that Olympics organizers have pre-approved to avoid potentially testing positive for a performance-enhancing drug and being expelled from the Games or, worse, their sport in general.
The Olympic Games have long faced years of doping scandals, the largest and most recent one resulting in Russia not being allowed to use its flag at the Games – a “ban” on paper, but Russian athletes are still invited to play despite over 1,000 of them being implicated in using performance-enhancing drugs as part of a systematic, government-run scheme. Russian leader Vladimir Putin will attend the Beijing Olympics even has Russia maintains its nominal “banned” status.
The WADA warning did not suggest that eating the meat of animals who have consumed steroids would have any impact on athletic performance, but that anti-doping testing could pick up on the chemical in the body of someone who eats such an animal.
According to the South China Morning Post, the chemical in question is clenbuterol, an “anabolic agent” that can result in a positive drug test for athletes through “food contamination” rather than bad-faith attempts to improve athletic results.
Clenbuterol is also illegal to use in animals in both the US and European Union, while Wada also issued a special report detailing specific warnings about consuming meat that has come from either China or Mexico,” the Morning Post noted.
The WADA warning follows a similar, but more severe, statement from the German National Anti-Doping Agency to its athletes urging them to simply avoid eating meat while in China. In contrast, the Morning Post reported, the WADA “clarified that athletes who are eating their meals within the Athletes’ Village will be fine as the food is properly sourced.”
Reports on the WADA statement did not specify any concerns that China would be responsible for sourcing the food in question to athletes in competition with the Chinese team, creating a conflict of interest.
A spokesperson for the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics gave a statement to the government-run Xinhua News Agency on Monday dismissing any concerns that Chinese meat consumption could potentially lead to the disqualification of an athlete.
“The Beijing 2022 Organizing Committee (BOCOG) has always attached great importance to food safety, and all meat products provided for the Winter Olympics must meet food safety requirements,” the unnamed spokesman was quoted as saying. “The supervision of meat products by China’s food safety watchdog starts from breeding, and we have established a traceable information recording system covering the entire process of animal growth.”
“The feed, medication, and epidemic prevention of food animals are strictly managed under China’s national standards to ensure the absolute safety of athletes’ meals,” the spokesman said, adding ominously, “we still recommend athletes pay attention to their personal diet and medication to align with the special testing requirements in international sports events.”
The health and safety of athletes has become a growing concern surrounding the Beijing Games far beyond the potential of China feeding athletes contaminated meat. Of paramount importance is the ongoing Chinese coronavirus pandemic, which originated in Wuhan, China, in late 2019. The Chinese government claimed that it had vanquished the Chinese coronavirus on a national level in March 2020, when dictator Xi Jinping paraded through the streets of Wuhan and announced a return to normalcy. China admitted in October, however, that it had documented a surge in coronavirus cases – first in Inner Mongolia, but soon spreading to at least ten provinces and forcing the lockdown of major cities. At press time, the cities of Xi’an and Tianjin – home to 13 million and 15 million people, respectively – are under lockdown.
The Chinese government announced that it would not sell tickets to spectators for the Winter Olympics on Monday, citing growing coronavirus cases and the discovery of the omicron variant of the virus in Beijing this weekend.
Some governments, like that of New Zealand, announced they would not send diplomats to the Winter Olympics out of fear of spreading coronavirus. They have not, however, expressed similar concerns for their athletes.
Also of concern is China’s poor treatment of its own athletes. Peng Shuai, a Chinese tennis champion, remains out of the public eye at press time after a scandal erupted when she publicly accused a senior Chinese official of rape. The Chinese Communist Party launched a propaganda campaign to insist that Peng was safe and not being silenced that ended with Peng abruptly denying she ever made the accusation.
American athletes who have either expressed outrage over China’s human rights abuses or solidarity with its victims may find themselves the targets of law enforcement. Last month, snowboarding champion Shaun White, who recently is believed to have secured a spot on the U.S. Olympic team, posed with a Tibetan flag for a photo. Possessing a Tibetan flag is a crime in China.
Figure skater Timothy LeDuc may also be guilty of the Chinese “crime” of “picking quarrels and provoking trouble” for acknowledging the genocide of the Uyghur people at the hands of the Chinese Communist Party.
“What I can say is we absolutely acknowledge the horrifying things that we’ve seen happening to the Uyghurs. I read somewhere the other day that it’s the largest number of people held in internment and labor camps since World War II,” LeDuc told reporters after qualifying for the Olympics. “I mean, these are horrifying human rights abuses that we’re seeing happening. And it can feel very powerless when you read those things, because you think, ‘What can I do?’”
China has given no public assurances that athletes will not be detained for possessing illegal opinions.
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