Facing demands from two of America’s most decorated Olympic swimmers, members of Congress said Tuesday they are open to cutting funding to the global regulator charged with ensuring a level playing field at the Olympics because of its refusal to hold accountable Chinese swimmers who tested positive for a banned drug.
In testimony before a House subcommittee, Michael Phelps, a 23-time Olympic gold medalist, and Allison Schmitt, a four-time Olympic gold medalist, said it was unacceptable that the World Anti-Doping Agency, or WADA , paved the way for swimmers to win medals at the 2021 Games and compete at the next ones in Paris.
Phelps and Schmitt, who were joined in their testimony by the top U.S. anti-doping official, said WADA’s inaction sent a message to professional athletes, amateurs and children: doping would be tolerated. Phelps said such lack of enforcement could ultimately doom the Olympics.
“Honestly, if we continue to let things go further, the Olympics might not even be here,” Phelps said during the hearing before the Committee on Oversight and Investigations Subcommittee. Energy and Commerce of the House of Representatives.
The two swimmers’ message fell on receptive ears, with lawmakers from both parties suggesting WADA could risk losing its funding from the United States, which gives it more money than any other country.
“Maybe if they’re not going to do the work, we shouldn’t even fund them,” said Rep. Morgan Griffith, Republican of Virginia and chairman of the subcommittee.
The hearing marked one of the most significant steps taken by U.S. officials toward WADA since The New York Times reported in April that the agency and Chinese anti-doping authorities had declined to sanction 23 elite swimmers Chinese who tested positive for a banned drug in early 2021, allowing them to participate in the Games held in Tokyo that summer.
Chinese authorities said the positive tests were the result of unintentional contamination of the swimmers and involved tiny amounts of the banned substance, a conclusion accepted by WADA but questioned by many anti-doping experts.
The subcommittee leaders reprimanded Witold Banka, the AMA president, for refusing to testify. An empty chair and a microphone with his nameplate were set up next to the other witnesses.
Phelps, whose swimming career spanned five Olympics, told the committee he doesn’t believe he has ever competed on untouched ground at the international level. Schmitt was a member of the U.S. 4×200-meter freestyle relay team that finished second to China at the Tokyo Olympics. It was one of five events in which Chinese swimmers who tested positive for the banned substance months earlier won medals, including three gold.
“We raced hard,” Schmitt said of the U.S. team in his testimony. “We followed all protocols and accepted our defeat with grace.”
With the revelations about the Chinese testing positive, she added, “many of us will be haunted by the podium that may have been affected by doping.” »
Scrutiny over its handling of positive tests has left WADA facing a growing crisis in the run-up to this summer’s Games.
Some American athletes who will compete in the Paris Games, including two-time Olympic gold medalist Lilly King, have said they cannot be sure they will be able to compete on a level playing field. Phelps, who like Schmitt retired from competitive swimming, called WADA “an organization that continues to prove itself incapable or unwilling to enforce its policies consistently around the world.” .
Travis Tygart, the director general of the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency and a vocal critic of WADA, has recommended that the United States condition funding for the agency, which is more than $3.6 million this year, on WADA’s full disclosure of the file it has on Chinese swimmers.
He also proposed in his written testimony that WADA, in an effort to prevent a repeat of what happened with the Chinese swimmers, establish a committee of independent experts to review cases in which athletes tested positive but their countries refused to sanction them. Under current rules, even athletes who are not disciplined are supposed to have their positive test made public.
In the case of the Chinese swimmers prior to the 2021 Games, no public announcements were made regarding the positive tests, the swimmers were not punished, and they continued to compete in the Olympics without their rivals knowing it. There were questions about their use of a banned jersey. substance.
Tygart also called for an audit of the agency.
The agency has maintained its management of positive tests. He has appointed a former Swiss prosecutor to determine whether he did anything wrong or gave favorable treatment to China, although U.S. officials, other countries’ anti-doping authorities and athletes have questioned whether this investigation would be truly independent. The findings of this investigation are expected to be published before the Olympics.
The Times reported in April that Chinese anti-doping authorities had claimed that the athletes should not be sanctioned because traces of the drug for which they had tested positive – a prescription heart medication known as trimetazidine, or TMZ – were found in the kitchen of a hotel. where they stayed for a meeting at the end of 2020 and the beginning of 2021.
The Chinese authorities concluded that the positive tests after the competition were therefore the result of the swimmers’ involuntary ingestion of food contaminated with TMZ, without however knowing how this drug, presented in pill form, could have found its way into the meal for so many swimmers.
Despite rules requiring public disclosure of contamination cases – even those in which athletes are cleared – the Chinese have kept positive tests secret. WADA, which is supposed to act as a safety net when countries fail to follow the rules, accepted the Chinese authorities’ explanation, failed to conduct an on-the-ground investigation and refused to try to discipline the athletes.
The Times’ revelation about the positive tests and WADA’s handling of them raised questions around the world about the agency charged with keeping the Olympics clean.
The loudest outcry came from the United States, which has seen competition from China intensify in swimming. The top drug official in the Biden White House has demanded more accountability and transparency from WADA, members of Congress have urged the FBI to investigate the matter, and lawmakers are weighing whether to continue to fund the agency.
In his prepared remarks submitted to the committee, Schmitt described efforts by U.S. athletes to ensure compliance with anti-doping rules, from having to urinate in front of doping testers to avoiding something as simple as a topical cream to relieve dry skin if they I’m not sure what ingredients it contains.
“I even had a drug tester come and sit next to me during a college history exam because he showed up unannounced,” Schmitt said.
Phelps first testified before Congress on this issue in 2017, in response to the doping scandal in which a former Russian official publicly stated that the country had run a state-sponsored doping program that produced Olympic stars. Phelps said during Tuesday’s hearing that he was “incredulous” to be bringing up the same issue again seven years later.
“It is clear to me that all attempts to reform WADA have failed,” Phelps said, “and there are still deep-rooted systemic problems that prove detrimental to the integrity of international sport and the rights of athletes to fair competition.”