Michael Phelps says athletes lost trust in World Anti-Doping Agency after China swimming scandal

Michael Phelps, the most decorated Olympic athlete in history, criticized the World Anti-Doping Agency and said athletes had lost confidence in enforcing the organization’s policies following the Chinese doping scandal.

“It cannot reasonably be a coincidence that (WADA) has once again succumbed to the pressures of international sport,” Phelps told the House Oversight and Investigations Subcommittee on Energy on Tuesday. and trade. “Close friends have potentially been affected by (WADA’s) failure to follow its own rules in investigating nearly two dozen positive tests on Chinese swimmers. Many of them will live with “what ifs” for the rest of their lives.

Phelps and fellow Olympic swimmer Allison Schmitt testified before the committee following allegations that 23 Chinese swimmers tested positive for a banned substance seven months before the 2021 Tokyo Olympics and were never punished.

Phelps won a record 28 medals in five Games, including 23 golds. Schmitt, a four-time gold medalist, was a member of the U.S. 4×200-meter freestyle relay team that finished second to China in Tokyo.

“We ran hard. We trained hard. We followed all the protocols. We respected their performance and accepted our defeat,” Schmitt said. “But now, hearing that the Chinese relay was made up of athletes who had not served a suspension, I think about what happened. We may never know the truth, and it could haunt many of us for years. »

Eleven of the 23 swimmers who tested positive in 2021 will compete in the Paris Olympics next month.

WADA’s handling of China’s case is the subject of an independent review. Phelps said the AMA “failed” and urged Congress to pressure the agency to apply its policies equally.

“As athletes, we can no longer blindly trust the World Anti-Doping Agency, an organization that continues to prove that it is either incapable or unwilling to enforce its policies consistently around the world,” Phelps said.

WADA President Witold Bańka was invited to Tuesday’s hearing but declined to attend.

On April 20, a report by the New York Times and German television station ARD revealed that the swimmers had tested positive for trimetazidine (TMZ), a prescription heart medication that can improve performance by increasing flow. blood to the heart.

Swimmers were allowed to compete in the Olympics after WADA accepted China’s findings suggesting Chinese swimmers had unwittingly ingested the substance from food they ate at a hotel in Shijiazhuang, province Chinese from Hebei.

Chinese investigators have not said how the banned substance ended up in the hotel kitchen. Two months after the swimmers tested positive, investigators reported finding traces of the substance in spice containers, sinks and hotel kitchen vents, an explanation that many experts anti-doping questions.

Questions remain over how Chinese authorities handled the samples, which were supposed to be immediately sent to an accredited laboratory that would analyze the results and report them to WADA and World Aquatics, the sport’s international governing body. Results were not reported to the monitoring site until two months after sample collection.

But before Tokyo, there was no suspension or public disclosure. WADA did not prevent any of the swimmers who tested positive from competing in an Olympic qualifying event and, ultimately, the Olympic Games.

On the day of the Times report, WADA issued a lengthy statement defending its decision to accept the findings of the Chinese Anti-Doping Agency (CHINADA) – that the swimmers had tested positive for TMZ in early 2021 after being exposed by inadvertence to the substance. by contamination. The release emphasizes their review process and states that an on-the-ground investigation is not possible due to COVID-19 restrictions.

The United States is WADA’s largest funder, contributing more than $3 million in taxpayer money last year alone.

U.S. Anti-Doping Agency CEO Travis Tygart testified Tuesday and called on the United States to condition its future funding of WADA on agency reforms.

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(Photo of Michael Phelps during Tuesday’s testimony: Nathan Howard/Getty Images)