Caeleb Dressel and Katie Ledecky are not confident that this year’s Olympics will be fair. They share concerns about the Chinese team and how its ongoing doping scandal might effect competition.
Team USA is not alone in this thinking because there is tangible reason for distress!
It was revealed in April that the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) and Chinese Anti-Doping Agency officials did not publicly disclose positive doping tests that were collected in 2021. 23 Chinese Olympic swimmers tested positive for potent performance-enhancing drugs on the eve of the Tokyo Games. Their results were secretly swept under the rug by China and the international governing body.
WADA did not investigate further. Nor did it say anything about the positive tests. Chinese officials blamed the results on trace amounts of trimetazidine in a kitchen of their team hotel. That was it.
Nothing more has come from the (pretty major!!) doping scandal and the International Olympic Committee is threatening to revoke the 2034 Games from the United States unless it stands down from its independent investigation.
Meanwhile, the first swimming events are set to get underway at the Olympics in Paris on Saturday. There is a real cause for concern when it comes to the legitimacy of this year’s competition.
Who is to say that even more Chinese tests aren’t being hidden from the public… again? It happened last time and China didn’t get punished— at all. Why wouldn’t it happen, again, three years later?
Fair questions. Ledecky and Dressel are also interested in the answers!
The most-decorated female swimmer of all-time called for transparency. She took a firm stance on all of the controversy and expressed her concerns about equal testing around the world. Team USA puts an emphasis on clean athletes during training. Ledecky isn’t so sure that other countries do the same.
Dressel went even one step further. The seven-time gold medalist stated his opinion Olympics while sitting next to the two biggest figures in World Aquatics, president Husain Al-Musallam and executive director Brent Nowicki. Neither official looked shocked by the swimmer’s comments when asked whether he was confident that this summer’s Games will be “clean.”
“No, not really. I don’t think they have given us enough evidence to support how this case was handled.”
— Caeleb Dressel
Awkward, but entirely fair!
Al-Musallam offered a rebuttal to Dressel’s comments after he had left the stage. He tried to ensure that everything is fine, event there is no real evidence to suggest that it is.
“First, the rules apply to everyone. There is no exception. Secondly, to gain the trust of the athletes, we have the trust of the athletes. Some athletes have doubts, and they have a different view.”
— Husain Al-Musallam
Nowicki also failed to dispel the concerns with his statement. It went nowhere.
“I think trust is a process, and I think we have to not look at it subjectively or indivualistically and look at just one person’s level of trust is. We have to look at it holistically. We’ll work again tirelessly every day to regain that trust. I think we’ll do that with the perspective of all of our sports, all of our athletes. We hope that we have a different answer in LA.”
— Brent Nowicki
Neither official provided anything of value to the conversation. They both dropped the ball.
Is China clean? We don’t know. Swimming competition starts this weekend. Stay tuned.