A bipartisan group of US lawmakers announced legislation on Tuesday that would give Washington greater authority to withhold funding from the global body that oversees national drug-testing programmes, amid reports of Chinese Olympic athletes being cleared after testing positive for performance-enhancing drugs.
Introduced by Senators Marsha Blackburn, Republican of Tennessee, and Chris Van Hollen, Democrat of Maryland, the Restoring Confidence in the World Anti-Doping Agency Act of 2024 was also supported by the leaders of the House select committee on China, Representatives John Moolenaar, Republican of Michigan, and Raja Krishnamoorthi, Democrat of Illinois.
The bill would require the US Office of National Drug Control Policy to assess the World Anti-Doping Agency’s independence and would give it permanent authority to withhold voluntary contributions to the agency if independence is found lacking. With a 2023 payment of US$3.4 million, the US is the largest donor to the agency, known as Wada.
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If a conclusion of faulty conduct is made, the bill would also push the national drug control office to get the US representation on Wada, including on its executive committee. While Wada does not have the authority to guarantee the US seats, lawmakers say the ultimate goal of the bill is to empower US agencies to “use all available tools” to ensure that the global body has a “credible and independent governance model”.
In 2021, the World Anti-Doping Agency allowed 23 Chinese swimmers who used performance enhancing drugs to compete in the Olympics and to win gold medals.
I sent a letter to the President of @wada_ama demanding answers. We must ensure Communist China is not above the rules.
— Sen. Marsha Blackburn (@MarshaBlackburn) June 4, 2024
Tuesday’s action is the latest in a continuing debate within the athletic world, where China’s record has long been a lightning rod.
In introducing the bill, legislators referenced a New York Times report from Tuesday, which cites anonymous sources saying that Wada chose not to appeal China’s decision to clear two elite swimmers who tested positive for metandienone, an anabolic steroid, in 2022, despite doubts from at least one expert for the body. One of the swimmers, Tang Muhan, is a member of China’s team at the 2024 Paris Olympics.
That report followed another one from earlier in the year revealing that 23 Chinese swimmers tested positive for trimetazidine, another powerful performance-enhancing drug, before the Tokyo Summer Olympics in 2021 and were allowed to compete. Several of those athletes will be competing again this year.
In both cases, Beijing said it was likely the athletes unwittingly ingested food that contained the drugs – attributing the 2022 tests to hamburgers from a Beijing restaurant. In the 2022 case, China’s anti-doping agency had provisionally suspended the two athletes.
“We owe it to the athletes of every nation to take a stand in favour of a fair, drug-free Olympics,” Moolenaar said on Tuesday.
“While we may not be able to bring the [Chinese Communist Party] officials responsible for these crimes to justice, we can hold their foreign co-conspirators accountable.”
Lawmakers accused Wada of failing to independently investigate and verify the findings of Chinese authorities.
The agency issued a statement refuting the fresh accusations related to the 2022 positive tests, saying it “thoroughly reviewed the cases in early 2024 with all due scepticism, and concluded that there was no evidence to challenge contaminated meat as the source of the positive tests and therefore decided not to appeal”.
“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,” it continued, noting that there were several recent contamination cases in the US that were also accepted without punishment.
“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.”
According to World Aquatics, the international governing body for aquatic sports, swimmers from China were the most tested athletes before the Paris Olympics with an average of 21 anti-doping tests each – almost four times as much as their US counterparts.
Chinese athletes, for their part, have complained about the effects of the tests on their performance at the Paris Games.
More from South China Morning Post:
- World doping chiefs confirm 23 Chinese swimmers tested positive for heart drug before Tokyo Games, accepted tests tainted
- Chinese swimmers’ doping allegations: what drug was involved, what has Wada said, and what might happen next
- US Anti-Doping Agency calls for Wada overhaul, probe into China swim doping; says questions not ‘satisfactorily answered’
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