Doping Regulator Knew of Previous Positive Tests by Chinese Swimmers

After the revelation in April that 23 elite Chinese swimmers had tested positive for a banned substance months before the last Summer Olympic Games, China and the global antidoping authority vigorously defended their decisions to allow them to compete in the Games in 2021. The swimmers, they insisted, had not been doping.

But as they made those claims, China and the antidoping authority were both aware that three of those 23 swimmers had tested positive several years earlier for a different performance-enhancing drug and had escaped being publicly identified and suspended in that case as well, according to a secret report reviewed by The New York Times.

In both instances, China claimed that the swimmers had unwittingly ingested the banned substances, an explanation viewed with considerable skepticism by some antidoping experts. The two incidents add to longstanding suspicions among rival athletes about what they see as a pattern of Chinese doping and the unwillingness or inability of the global authority, the World Anti-Doping Agency, to deal with it.

The three Chinese athletes revealed to have tested positive earlier, in 2016 and 2017, were no ordinary swimmers: Two would go on to win gold medals at the Tokyo Olympic Games in 2021, and the third is now a world-record holder. All three are expected to contend for medals again at the Paris Games in July.

Antidoping experts say that if Chinese officials and WADA had abided by existing rules with both sets of positive tests, the athletes would have been publicly identified and subject to further scrutiny, and could have been disqualified from the 2021 Olympics, and possibly the Games that open in Paris next month.

“Athletes we have spoken to are appalled with the antidoping system and WADA,” said Rob Koehler, the director general of Global Athlete, a group working for athletes’ rights. “Athletes are expected to follow the antidoping rules to a T, but yet the very organization holding them accountable does not have to.”