As doping scandal hovers over Olympics’ start, U.S. swim team calls for fairness

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PARIS — Seven-time Olympic gold medalist Katie Ledecky and other American swimmers expressed their support for stringent anti-doping policies on the eve of the Paris Games, the first major international meet since news broke of a doping scandal involving Chinese swimmers. Ledecky said she is asking that the rules ensuring fair competition are applied “fairly and consistently worldwide.”

Multiple outlets, including the New York Times, in April revealed that 23 Chinese swimmers tested positive for a banned substance seven months before the Tokyo Olympics in 2021, and none were ever punished. The banned substance was trimetazidine (TMZ), a prescription heart drug that can enhance performance by increasing blood flow to the heart.

Some of the athletes who tested positive went on to medal in Tokyo, performances that included three gold medals. The swimmers were allowed to compete in the Olympics after the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) accepted China’s findings that suggested the Chinese swimmers unwittingly ingested the substance from food they ate at a hotel in Shijiazhuang, in the country’s Hebei Province.

WADA has stood by its handling of the situation amid significant criticism from the United States Anti-Doping Agency (USADA) and elsewhere. That has obviously been a touchy subject, and the International Olympic Committee (IOC) made its allegiances clear earlier Wednesday in what was supposed to be the straightforward approval process of Salt Lake City as the host of the 2034 Winter Olympic Games. The IOC is upset that there is now a U.S. federal investigation into the Chinese swimmers accused of doping but allowed to compete in Tokyo.

Before the IOC formally awarded the Games to Salt Lake City in an 83-6 vote, it forced a group of Utah politicians and U.S. Olympic leaders to sign an agreement stating that they would lobby the federal government to end the investigation and to change the anti-conspiracy law that allows it to work on such a case.

The topic was already top of mind for Ledecky and her peers, even before the hoopla at the IOC meeting. She was asked by a reporter at the pre-meet news conference if she thought she’d have a fair fight ahead in the competition that begins Saturday.

“I hope everyone here (in Paris) is going to be competing clean this week,” Ledecky said. “But what really matters also is: Were they training clean? Hopefully, that’s been the case. Hopefully, there’s been even testing around the world. I think everyone’s heard what the athletes think. They want transparency. They want further answers to the questions that still remain.

“At this point, we’re here to race. We’re going to race whoever is in the lane next to us. We’re not the ones paid to do the testing, so we hope that the people that are follow their own rules. That applies now and into the future. We want to see some change for the future.”

U.S. breaststroker Nic Fink said he, too, is hopeful that every swimmer competing at the upcoming Games is clean.

U.S. head men’s coach Anthony Nesty said he and head women’s coach Todd DeSorbo both will continue to advocate for greater transparency around testing and processes because it is too important not to.

“From our standpoint, this is one of the best sports on the planet,” Nesty said. “To further the sport, we have to keep it as clean as possible. Hopefully, all of the entities involved have to do all the checks and balances that make sure the sport continues to grow and be clean and safe.”