Chinese doping scandal that has hung over these Paris Olympics as the events finished Sunday night.
China won the men’s 4x100-meter medley relay in 3 minutes, 27.46 seconds, with two of the four members on the team listed among 23 Chinese swimmers who tested positive ahead of the Tokyo Olympics three years ago. The swimmers were allowed to compete after a Chinese investigation ruled that they consumed food that had been contaminated.
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The New York Times reported last week that two more Chinese swimmers had tested positive, including one 2024 Olympian, for a banned substance in 2022 but were cleared by Chinese officials to compete.
The World Anti-Doping Agency stood by its decision to clear the 23 swimmers who tested positive for a banned heart medication.
Meanwhile, 3 countries in the top 5 of the medal table are also… coincidentally, the 3 countries that receive 63% of all exemptions for the use of performance-enhancing (or masking agent) drugs to treat medical conditions. Nothing off about that at all.
Noah Lyles is literally bragging that he has (and is presumably medicated for) allergies, asthma, ADHD, …
Katie Ledecky has POTS, which under WADA’s TUE policy is basically a blank cheque for cardiovascular medication.
Simone Biles is diagnosed with ADHD, for which medications improve focus, reaction time, and muscle recovery.
All top athletes, all well-documented as having conditions that coincidentally can be treated using performance-enhancing drugs. It’s an absurd level of “coincidence” that you simply don’t see in Canada, nevermind elsewhere in the world… all the money we’re dumping into WADA just for the US to skip around the rules like they don’t matter. Mind you, my claim isn’t that they’re lying about their conditions… my worry is moreso that the loose rules around TUEs in the US make it so that a medical condition (that happens to require performance-enhancing drugs to medicate) is a key pathway to reaching Olympic-level competition because their conditions enable them to dope like no one else can.
Nevermind that USADA is on the record letting doped athletes continue to compete as a matter of policy, and it’s also a matter of policy that USADA does not enforce WADA Code-compliance for most athletes. It’s fucking absurd the level of hypocrisy on display from USADA… coming from Canada, where WADA is headquartered and where we’ve dumped countless millions into the institution, it feels like a slap on the face. The US, who is supposed to be our closest ally, is questioning the work of officials working in Canada, questioning the integrity of an institution based in Canada, and questioning the ability of Canadians to make decisions. Kindly fuck off please.