World swimming federation confirms US federal investigation into Chinese swimmers’ doping tests

July 5, 2024

GENEVA (AP) — The worldwide swimming federation says its high administrator has been ordered to testify as a witness in a U.S. prison investigation into the case of 23 Chinese language swimmers who failed doping tests in 2021 but have been allowed to proceed competing.

The information comes simply three weeks earlier than the Paris Olympics, the place 11 of the Chinese language swimmers who examined optimistic for the banned coronary heart remedy three years in the past are set to compete.

The swimmers received three gold medals for China on the 2021 Tokyo Olympics, simply weeks after the World Anti-Doping Company declined to problem Chinese language authorities’ rationalization of meals contamination at a lodge to justify not suspending them.

These choices, which World Aquatics individually reached additionally, weren’t revealed till reporting in April by the New York Occasions and German broadcaster ARD.

A Home Committee on China requested the Justice Department and the FBI on Could 21 to research the case below a federal legislation that enables probes into suspected doping conspiracies even when they occurred exterior the U.S.

World Aquatics confirmed to The Related Press on Thursday that government director Brent Nowicki was subpoenaed to testify within the investigation.

“World Aquatics can affirm that its government director, Brent Nowicki, was served with a witness subpoena by america authorities,” the federation stated in an announcement to AP. “He’s working to schedule a gathering with the federal government, which, in all probability will obviate the necessity for testimony earlier than a Grand Jury.”

World Aquatics declined to reply questions on the place and when Nowicki was served his subpoena and didn’t say which workplace was dealing with the investigation.

“Per our normal observe, the FBI doesn’t affirm nor deny the existence of an investigation,” the bureau stated Thursday in an electronic mail reply.

The Chinese language swimmers case may grow to be the highest-profile use up to now of a U.S. federal legislation handed in 2020 in fallout from the long-running scandal of Russian state-backed doping in sports activities.

The 23 swimmers examined optimistic for trimetazidine in January 2021 and people have been filed weeks later within the international anti-doping database. They included Zhang Yufei, who went on take Olympic gold within the ladies’s 200-meter butterfly and 4×200 freestyle relay, and Wang Shun, the boys’s 200 medley champion.

A later investigation by Chinese language state authorities stated traces of the substance have been discovered within the kitchen of a lodge the place the crew stayed. No rationalization has been given about how and why the drug prescribed in tablet type obtained there.

WADA accepted the theory which allowed the Chinese language swimmers to proceed to compete, and has since described it as “a comparatively easy case of mass contamination.”

The company has since defended its handling of the case that was stored secret in 2021, saying it had no technique to independently disprove the speculation throughout the COVID-19 pandemic when journey to China was not doable.

Attorneys for WADA stated in April this yr they didn’t have proof to win separate appeals in opposition to the 23 swimmers earlier than the Tokyo Olympics. Any appeals in search of suspensions for the swimmers would have been heard on the Courtroom of Arbitration for Sport, the place Nowicki was a long-time senior counsel earlier than becoming a member of World Aquatics in 2021.

“This scandal raises severe authorized, moral, and aggressive issues and will represent a broader state-sponsored technique by the Folks’s Republic of China to unfairly compete on the Olympic Video games in methods Russia has beforehand achieved,” the Choose Committee on the Chinese language Communist Occasion stated within the letter to the Justice Division and FBI.

The case was additionally raised at a congressional listening to final month through which swimming nice Michael Phelps stated athletes have misplaced religion in WADA as the worldwide watchdog attempting to maintain cheaters out of sports activities.

Officers from the Montreal-based company declined an invite to return to the listening to, saying it could be “inappropriate to be pulled right into a political debate earlier than a U.S. congressional committee concerning a case from a unique nation, particularly whereas an impartial assessment into WADA’s dealing with of the case is ongoing.”

That assessment report is pending from a WADA-appointed former public prosecutor within the Swiss canton of Vaud that’s house to the Worldwide Olympic Committee and governing our bodies of many Olympic sports activities.

U.S. Anti-Doping Company chief government Travis Tygart recommended to The Related Press an ongoing federal investigation may make sport officers touring to the U.S. “fearful that they might must reply questions on their actions from the FBI.”

The U.S. will host the 2028 Summer season Video games in Los Angeles, and in Paris on July 24 the IOC ought to affirm Salt Lake Metropolis as host for the 2034 Winter Video games.

The Rodchenkov Anti-Doping Act, named for a whistleblower who uncovered Russian state-backed doping, handed with bipartisan backing. It obtained broad help from the worldwide sports activities world for its goals to criminalize doping.

Nevertheless, WADA lobbied against what it noticed as a danger of overreach from the “extraterritorial” jurisdiction it may give to U.S. federal companies, and the IOC also voiced concerns.

The Rodchenkov Act, Tygart stated, “was enacted in 2021 with broad athlete, sport and multinational governmental help as a result of WADA couldn’t be trusted to be a robust, truthful international watchdog to guard clear athletes and truthful sport.”

___ Pells reported from Denver, Colorado.