The World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) issued a scathing statement condemning America’s top sports substance testing authority on Wednesday, blasting it as “ironic and hypocritical” for demanding more testing after Chinese athletes were found to have ingested banned substances prior to the 2024 Paris Olympics.
WADA was responding to a report in Reuters this week revealing that the United States Anti-Doping Agency (USADA), the national analogous agency to WADA, had used athletes who tested positive for banned substances as informants, allowing them to continue competing so long as they went “undercover” and helped USADA identify other athletes who were violating doping regulations. It notably mentioned the use of the athletes as informants only in passing, protesting plainly that USADA had allowed the athletes “to compete for years, in at least one case without ever publishing or sanctioning their anti-doping rule violations.”
The tenor of WADA’s condemnation contrasts significantly to the deference the agency has granted the Chinese Anti-Doping Agency (CHINADA), which allowed athletes to compete at the highest levels of sport, including the ongoing Paris Olympic Games, after testing positive for banned drugs. WADA accepted CHINADA’s explanations and has bristled at mounting pressure from the sports world, led in part by sports legends such as American swimmer Michael Phelps, to universalize testing and regulations to prevent athletes who fail drug tests from competing.
According to Reuters, citing WADA, the USADA allowed three athletes – two “low-ranking” and one “higher profile” – to continue competing after failing a substance test if they agreed to help collect information on others similarly flouting anti-doping rules. The USADA confirmed the report. Its leader, Chief Executive Travis Tygart, told Reuters the measure is “an effective way to get at these bigger, systemic problems.”
“Under the world anti-doping code, to which USADA is a signatory, an athlete who ‘substantially’ assists with a doping investigation can apply to have a proportion of any ban suspended after prosecution,” Reuters noted.
The athletes in question have not been publicly named out of fear for their “safety.”
WADA responded to the report with a statement accusing USADA of attacking the “integrity of sporting competition” by attempting to find as many athletes using banned substances as possible.
“This USADA scheme threatened the integrity of sporting competition, which the Code seeks to protect. By operating it, USADA was in clear breach of the rules,” WADA’s statement read. “Contrary to the claims made by USADA, WADA did not sign off on this practice of permitting drug cheats to compete for years on the promise that they would try to obtain incriminating evidence against others.”
WADA admitted that the world anti-doping code allows for clearance of an athlete offering “substantial assistance” in investigations, but claimed, “there is a clear process for that, which does not involve allowing those who have cheated to continue to compete while they may or may not gather incriminating evidence against others and while they could retain a performance-enhancement effect from the substances they took.”
“It is ironic and hypocritical that USADA cries foul when it suspects other Anti-Doping Organizations are not following the rules to the letter while it did not announce doping cases for years,” the WADA statement continued, “and allowed cheats to carry on competing, on the off chance they might help them catch other possible violators.”
The “other Anti-Doping Organizations” remark appears to be a reference to the ongoing scandal surrounding CHINADA’s clearance of athletes testing positive for banned substances, only made public by a report in the New York Times in April. The left-wing newspaper revealed that at least 23 athletes on the Chinese national swim team tested positive for trimetazidine (TMZ), a drug used to treat heart conditions abroad but not approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) prior to the 2021 Tokyo Summer Olympics. Many of them competed, and some were present and competed in Paris.
CHINADA claimed that the athletes consumed the banned drug through contaminated food and thus were not liable to be sanctioned. WADA did not question the conclusion.
In a statement on June 30, WADA defending CHINADA, using a much more conciliatory tone than that adopted with USADA.
“WADA thoroughly reviewed the cases in early 2024 with all due skepticism, and concluded that there was no evidence to challenge contaminated meat as the source of the positive tests and therefore decided not to appeal to CAS,” the agency claimed.
“WADA is generally concerned about the number of cases that are being closed without sanction when it is not possible to challenge the contamination theory successfully before CAS,” the statement conclude, suddenly shifting the focus to the United States. “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.”
“The politicization of anti-doping 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,” it concluded in its statement on Chinese athletes failing drug tests.
WADA’s antagonizing of American sports authorities has received the backing of the International Olympic Committee (IOC), which has in the past defended the Chinese government from criticism for hosting an Olympic Games while conducting a genocide and disappearing an athlete after she accused an Olympics official of rape. The IOC awarded Salt Lake City, Utah, hosting dutiesfor the 2034 Winter Olympics in July, but reportedly did so on the condition that American officials stop questioning WADA.
“If the U.S. doesn’t comply by accepting WADA’s authority, Salt Lake City’s status as a host city could be revoked,” the public station NPR reported.