Spokesperson criticises blackmail attempt WADA refuses to act: China affair over 23 swimmers continues
WADA does not want to check the authenticity of new information from Chinese swimmers for the time being - it insists on contact between investigators and the Chinese whistleblower.
According to information from the ARD doping editorial team, the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) currently only wants to resume investigating the 23 swimmers who tested positive for a banned substance in January 2021, but were not sanctioned, under certain conditions. The affair, in which WADA followed the Chinese Anti-Doping Agency CHINADA's theory of exoneration - without conducting its own investigations in China and without speaking to the swimmers concerned - has overshadowed the Olympic Games.
Athletes from several nations had said in Paris that they had lost confidence in a unified anti-doping campaign and WADA. On Saturday, investigators from WADA and the International Testing Agency (ITA) in Paris then viewed the originals of the social media posts and chats available to ARD. They contradict key points of the Chinese contamination scenario and thus further call into question the credibility of the theory.
Whistleblower fears reprisals
To protect those involved in the communication, the authors were made unrecognisable. As ARD has now heard from WADA, the evidence is apparently not sufficient for further investigations. WADA only wants to take up these investigations on the condition that it is given direct access to the whistleblower, the source.
Until then, it is also unlikely that it will use the opportunity in Paris to speak directly with the athletes concerned in order to verify the Chinese story. For fear of reprisals in China, the whistleblower refuses direct contact with WADA. By his own admission, he approached ARD with the information precisely because there was no trust in WADA after it had closed the case in 2021 after six weeks of investigation without sanctions and without making it public.
"Procedure borders on blackmail"
The fact that the independent investigation report and its annex on WADA's approach to the China affair revealed a particular closeness between WADA's leadership and the Chinese government also had a negative impact: The day after the Chinese announced their decision to discontinue the proceedings in mid-June 2021, a telephone conversation immediately took place between WADA Director General Olivier Niggli and China's Deputy Sports Minister.
Swimming's representative in the Athletes Germany interest group, Kevin Götz, is appalled: "For me, the procedure borders on blackmail if WADA only wants to take action when it has access to the source, the whistleblower, i.e. when their identity is to be revealed. After all, it is clear that WADA has recently lost a lot of trust, and I can fully understand that the source would prefer to remain anonymous under the circumstances, especially when it concerns a country like China. History has shown time and again how urgently we need whistleblowers and that their protection is paramount."
"WADA would be well advised to fulfil its mandate"
The paper drawn up by CHINADA with the support of a Government agency exonerates the swimmers. They were accidentally contaminated with the heart medication trimetazidine, which had got into their food in their hotel kitchen, and were therefore innocent. An investigation carried out weeks later claims to have established this on the basis of traces of the drug in the kitchen drain, for example, although extremely thorough cleaning and disinfection took place regularly during the Covid period.
The information now available to ARD would severely invalidate this theory on key points. On the one hand, not all swimmers apparently stayed and ate in the same hotel, so they could all have been contaminated there. On the other hand, many of them apparently trained together in a state facility in Beijing before the competition instead of being spread across the country, as stated by the Chinese, so that they could possibly have been doped with the banned substance at the same time.
The ARD doping editorial team cannot verify the authenticity of the information in China. Athletes worldwide are outraged that WADA only wants to investigate these events further under certain conditions, especially now that there are new indications. "WADA would be well advised to make fewer demands," says German athletes' representative Götz, "and instead fulfil its mandate and carry out investigations that bring all the background to light."