iStockphoto / Moussa81
Less than two days after the International Olympic Committee awarded the United States and Salt Lake City the 2034 Winter Olympics the IOC was threatening to revoke the hosting rights unless the USA stood down from probes into doping among Olympic athletes from China.
If there is one thing we don’t stand for in American sports it’s cheating and at the heart of this is the United States wanting to independently probe investigations into potential Chinese doping. The IOC, however, says ‘absolutely not’ and said any investigation from the U.S. Department of Justice into Chinese doping “are extremely worrying and basically, for us, unacceptable.”
In response to the Justice Department’s investigation, the International Olympic Committee demanded the US signs a contract saying they will respect the World Anti-Doping Agency’s investigation and actions. Tucked away in a press release on Wednesday was this:
IOC Member John Coates, Chair of the IOC’s Legal Affairs Commission, confirmed that the Olympic Host Contract will be strengthened in relation to WADA and the World Anti-Doping Code. The IOC has reinforced the current language in order to protect the integrity of the international anti-doping system and to allow the IOC to terminate the Olympic Host Contract in cases where “the supreme authority of the World Anti-Doping Agency in the fight against doping is not fully respected or if the application of the World Anti-Doping Code is hindered or undermined.”
This began back in April and, NPR reports, is tied to “positive doping tests collected in 2021 that the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) and Chinese officials never publicly disclosed.”
In response, WADA President Witold Banka said “we had no evidence of wrongdoing” which is odd given that there are positive doping tests that were never revealed. Those positive tests were linked to 23 Chinese Olympic swimmers and the tests were positive for a performance-enhancing drug.
Travis Tygart, head of the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency (USADA), responded by saying “It’s crushing to see that 23 Chinese swimmers had positive tests for a potent performance-enhancing drug on the eve of the 2021 Olympic Games [in Tokyo]. It’s even more devastating to learn the World Anti-Doping Agency and the Chinese Anti-Doping Agency secretly, until now, swept these positives under the carpet.”
At the time, Chinese officials claimed the potent performance-enhancing drug trimetazidine (TMZ) was allegedly found in trace amounts in a kitchen of the hotel where the athletes were staying.
Why would a performance-enhancing drug be laying around in a kitchen? How would trace amounts in a kitchen account for 21 athletes testing positive? Why didn’t the WADA investigate any of this?
These are all logical questions. They’re the first ones that came to mind when I first heard of this story. And the USADA would be fully justified launching a probe into what happened but now the International Olympic Committee is siding with the WADA and threatening to revoke the Salt Lake City Winter Olympics unless they stand down.
Historically, the United States doesn’t respond well to threats. It’s not in our DNA. If the Justice Department wants to launch the probe they 100% will and nobody on the US Olympic side will be able to stop that from happening. Furthermore, if China was cheating which 21 athletes testing positive for PEDs suggests they were, the world needs to know about it and they need to be held accountable.
What is the IOC and WADA afraid the world will find out?