Twist in Chinese doping scandal hangs over Australian Olympic trials

It felt remarkably appropriate that Mack Horton made an appearance at the Australian Olympic trials on Saturday. The retired Olympic gold medallist’s presence at the Brisbane Aquatic Centre during the week’s last heats session was brief and low-key, and would have flown under the radar if not for his Instagram story promoting Zac Stubblety-Cook’s pop-up coffee shop.

But there he was, one of the country’s pre-eminent clean sport campaigners, famous for calling out rival Sun Yang as a “drug cheat”, physically on the ground the very morning that new revelations in the Chinese doping scandal filtered through to the Dolphins, their coaches and the administrators. And he was visiting Stubblety-Cook, whose main rival at Paris 2024 will be one of the three Chinese swimmers at the centre of it all.

Qin Haiyang, the 200m breaststroke world record holder who beat Stubblety-Cook to gold at last year’s world championships en route to a breakthrough 50m-100m-200m breaststroke treble in Fukuoka, is one of 23 who, it emerged in April, had tested positive to the banned substance trimetazidine (TMZ) before the Tokyo Olympics. They were allowed to compete because the samples were deemed “contaminated” and the substance was found only in small traces.

Now the New York Times has followed up with a report that Qin, Wang Shun and Yang Junxuan also tested positive to the banned steroid clenbuterol years earlier, and escaped being publicly identified and suspended then as well.

The World Anti-Doping Agency, which has spent the past eight weeks on a defensive campaign amid accusations of everything from a cover-up to double standards and ineptitude, released a lengthy statement upon the story’s publication. It began by branding the Times’ reporting of the trimetazidine case as “sensationalist and inaccurate” and the subsequent criticism it had received as “highly charged” and “politically motivated”.

Then it confirmed the three swimmers named had indeed tested positive for “trace amounts” of clenbuterol, known for its ability to increase lean muscle mass and reduce body fat, in 2016 and 2017 through “meat contamination”. It then detailed in great depth the way clenbuterol is “used in some countries as a growth promoter for farm animals and, under specific circumstances, can result in a positive sample from an athlete who consumes meat from animals treated in that way”.

Zac Stubblety-Cook in the 200m breaststroke final on Friday.

That explanation is why WADA changed its guidelines on clenbuterol in 2019, leaving it on the banned list in the category that inflicts the harshest penalties but raising the threshold for a positive result. WADA director general Olivier Niggli said the trio simply represented three of the “thousands of confirmed cases of contamination in its various forms”.

But the general international sentiment has been one of growing mistrust towards the agency tasked with protecting athletes’ right to clean and fair competition. Of suspicion that WADA took the Chinese anti-doping agency, CHINADA, at its word that its swimmers were innocent and thus allowed it to sidestep processes other nations are obligated to uphold. As Horton told this masthead after the trimetazidine scandal broke: “this news is infuriating for the entire sporting community”.

The anti-doping community advocates for complete transparency and argues that, had the Chinese swimmers been publicly identified at the time and subject to further scrutiny, they may have been disqualified from the 2021 Olympics and possibly even the 2024 Games. Instead, China’s swimming team won three gold medals in Tokyo, in races involving Australians, and will be free to compete for more in Paris.

The effect at the trials on Saturday was both collective and individual. The news hung in the chlorinated air, an uneasy backdrop to every result and post-race interview. It was the undercurrent to what was said – and what was not said. These are athletes who, for their whole lives, have been told they are completely and absolutely responsible for everything that ends up in their bodies.

Shayna Jack and her lawyer front the media in the thick of her doping saga in 2019.

Shayna Jack learnt this in the most brutal way possible over the five years since she tested positive for a small amount of the banned substance Ligandrol, days before the start of the 2019 world championships. Unlike those of the Chinese swimmers, the freestyle sprinter’s case was made public and she endured a high-profile fight to clear her name that left her on the verge of taking her own life.

In the end, the 25-year-old served a two-year ban after the Court of Arbitration for Sport found she did not intentionally ingest the “pharmacologically irrelevant” amount of Ligandrol and halved the standard four-year suspension. WADA and Sports Integrity Australia had appealed based on their belief the ban was too lenient. The process deprived Jack of the chance to contest a maiden Olympics in Tokyo, a story told through the emotion of Friday night when she finally secured an individual Games debut via qualification for the 100m freestyle.

Hours later, she was faced with the reality that the Chinese swimmers in question had been allowed to compete in Tokyo when she had not. Jack kept her powder pretty dry when asked about it on Sunday. You sense she will have more to say after Paris. Others will spend the next few weeks between now and the Games in heavy discourse about the latest Olympics to be overshadowed by doping allegations.

Some will amplify their criticism of WADA, CHINADA and China’s swimmers. Others may argue innocent athletes are being caught in the anti-doping net because the testing technology is improving at a quicker rate than the capacity to ensure against contamination in supplements and pharmaceuticals. Others still might contend it is almost impossible for an athlete to prove they consumed contaminated food and drink.

Australia’s Mack Horton refused to share the podium with Sun Yang at the world championships.

Australian swimming coach Denis Cotterell, who works for the Chinese Swimming Association, in April sympathised with the Chinese swimmers whose names “are caught up in unfortunate circumstances” and who go to extreme measures – including avoiding eating in public – to avoid the risk of food contaminated with a substance on WADA’s prohibited list.

Cotterell also hinted at cultural differences and problematic western doping tropes dating back to the infamous scandals of the 1990s which stemmed from the Chinese swimming program’s connection to coaches who had previously worked in East Germany’s state-sponsored doping regime.

For now, Dolphins head coach Rohan Taylor said all the team could do was “trust that WADA are going to continue to investigate”.

“It’s not a controllable thing for us and for it to be a distraction, I think it’s probably a waste of energy,” Taylor said. “If somebody’s not doing the right thing, we hope the system catches them. That’s basically how we work because our guys get tested all the time, too, so we’re in the same boat.”

Does he believe every athlete in the pool in Paris will be clean?

“I hope so.”