Chinese doping scandal that has hung over these Paris Olympics as the events finished Sunday night.
China won the men’s 4x100-meter medley relay in 3 minutes, 27.46 seconds, with two of the four members on the team listed among 23 Chinese swimmers who tested positive ahead of the Tokyo Olympics three years ago. The swimmers were allowed to compete after a Chinese investigation ruled that they consumed food that had been contaminated.
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The New York Times reported last week that two more Chinese swimmers had tested positive, including one 2024 Olympian, for a banned substance in 2022 but were cleared by Chinese officials to compete.
The World Anti-Doping Agency stood by its decision to clear the 23 swimmers who tested positive for a banned heart medication.
Ah, the old “we’ve investigated ourselves and found no wrong-doing”
At least try “we hired an outside agency, totally didn’t bribe them, and they found no wrong-doing”, or better yet “we totally didn’t bribe the independent third party hired by someone else, and they found no wrong-doing”.
But I suppose I should be glad it wasn’t “we totally didn’t aim veiled threats at someone’s family and livelihood, etc.”
The funniest part about this is that the people complaining are saying that Pan Zhanle couldn’t possibly swim that fast.
Except he did, beating his own world record, and then he swam even faster in the 4x100m medley… And he himself has never tested positive for doping, not even in the contamination case.
I don’t question why the countries that disproportionately fund WADA get a disproportionate amount of the TUEs for legal performance-enhancing drugs, nor do I question why those countries also coincidentally are top performers in athletics.
We’re going to see this more and more as our misconceptions surrounding Chinese athletic performance start being superceded by the rise in nutrition in China. Chinese teens are taller than they’ve ever been before as diets approach that of developed countries. Plus, don’t forget that China has had thousands of years of geographically-selective copulation (the high plains in Inner Mongolia, the mountains in Tibet, the dry desert in Xinjiang, the humid coastal South)… And it’s only recently that we’re seeing the results of real genetic mixing amongst that population.
There’s two environmental factors to pay attention to as well: China’s history of famines (which only ended in the 60s and had happened basically every few decades prior) may have selected for efficient processing of specific foods and China’s notoriously factory-oriented meat industry may lead to excess growth hormones in children.
You forgot “It wasn’t us, someone else did it to us”
China blamed Australian beef, which apparently contains “Menthandienone” 🙄
Was it?
China’s wild claim after steroids detected in positive 2022 doping test
The bizarre reason China is blaming Australia after two of its star swimmers failed drug tests
Doesn’t really matter what they say, they dope & cheat everytime. As the comment above implies they always get away with it because of money.
How? WADA receives more money from the US and Canada than they do from China. France is far closer to the US than it is to China. Chinese consumer spending for foreign imports is in systemic decline. Meanwhile, China has basically failed to get TUEs (WADA-approved doping) for performance-enhancing drugs to treat “medical conditions” like asthma and ADHD. If WADA was in China’s pocket, we’d see China get approved for TUEs at will… Instead, we see TUEs granted disproportionately to the countries which fund WADA with the most money.
Corruption comes in many ways and forms, but usually it’s under the table. In any case, they are being investigated for their actions, as they should
F.B.I. and Justice Department Open Criminal Investigation in Chinese Doping Case
U.S. lawmakers threaten funding for sport doping program over China Olympic scandal
Meanwhile, 3 countries in the top 5 of the medal table are also… coincidentally, the 3 countries that receive 63% of all exemptions for the use of performance-enhancing (or masking agent) drugs to treat medical conditions. Nothing off about that at all.
Noah Lyles is literally bragging that he has (and is presumably medicated for) allergies, asthma, ADHD, …
Katie Ledecky has POTS, which under WADA’s TUE policy is basically a blank cheque for cardiovascular medication.
Simone Biles is diagnosed with ADHD, for which medications improve focus, reaction time, and muscle recovery.
All top athletes, all well-documented as having conditions that coincidentally can be treated using performance-enhancing drugs. It’s an absurd level of “coincidence” that you simply don’t see in Canada, nevermind elsewhere in the world… all the money we’re dumping into WADA just for the US to skip around the rules like they don’t matter. Mind you, my claim isn’t that they’re lying about their conditions… my worry is moreso that the loose rules around TUEs in the US make it so that a medical condition (that happens to require performance-enhancing drugs to medicate) is a key pathway to reaching Olympic-level competition because their conditions enable them to dope like no one else can.
Nevermind that USADA is on the record letting doped athletes continue to compete as a matter of policy, and it’s also a matter of policy that USADA does not enforce WADA Code-compliance for most athletes. It’s fucking absurd the level of hypocrisy on display from USADA… coming from Canada, where WADA is headquartered and where we’ve dumped countless millions into the institution, it feels like a slap on the face. The US, who is supposed to be our closest ally, is questioning the work of officials working in Canada, questioning the integrity of an institution based in Canada, and questioning the ability of Canadians to make decisions. Kindly fuck off please.