World Swimming Federation confirms US federal investigation into doping tests of Chinese swimmers

GENEVA – The International Swimming Federation says its top administrator was forced to testify as a witness in a US criminal investigation into the case of 23 Chinese swimmers who failed doping tests in 2021 they were still allowed to continue competing.

The news comes just three weeks before the Paris Olympics, where 11 of the Chinese swimmers who tested positive for the heart drug banned three years ago will compete.

Swimmers won three gold medals for China at the 2021 Tokyo Olympics, just weeks after the World Anti-Doping Agency refused to challenge Chinese authorities’ explanation of contaminated food at a hotel to justify not suspending them. .

These decisions, which World Aquatics also made separately, were not revealed until the April report by the New York Times and German broadcaster ARD.

A House Committee on China asked the Department of Justice and the FBI on May 21 to investigate the case under a federal law that allows investigations into suspected doping conspiracies even if they occurred outside the U.S.

World Aquatics confirmed to the Associated Press on Thursday that executive director Brent Nowicki has been subpoenaed to testify in the investigation.

“World Aquatics can confirm that its executive director, Brent Nowicki, has been issued a witness subpoena by the United States government,” the federation said in a statement to the AP. “He is working to schedule a meeting with the government, which, in all likelihood, will obviate the need for testimony before a Grand Jury.”

World Aquatics declined to answer questions about where and when Nowicki received his subpoena and did not say which office was handling the investigation.

“Per our standard practice, the FBI does not confirm or deny the existence of an investigation,” the agency said Thursday in an email response.

The case of the Chinese swimmers could become the most high-profile use yet of a US federal law passed in 2020 in the wake of the long-running doping scandal in Russian state-backed sport.

The 23 swimmers tested positive for trimetazidine in January 2021 and were registered weeks later in the global anti-doping database. They included Zhang Yufei, who won Olympic gold in the women’s 200-meter butterfly and 4×200 freestyle relay, and Wang Shun, the men’s 200-meter medley champion.

A subsequent investigation by Chinese state authorities said traces of the substance were found in the kitchen of a hotel where the team was staying. No explanation was given as to how and why the prescribed medication in tablet form got there.

LOVE accepted the theory which allowed Chinese swimmers to continue competing and has since described it as “a relatively simple case of mass contamination”.

The agency has since defended its management of the case that was kept secret in 2021, stating that there was no way to independently disprove the theory during the COVID-19 pandemic when traveling to China was not possible.

WADA lawyers said in April this year they did not have the evidence to win separate appeals against the 23 swimmers ahead of the Tokyo Olympics. Any appeals seeking suspensions for the swimmers would have been heard at the Court of Arbitration for Sport, where Nowicki was a long-time senior advisor before joining World Aquatics in 2021.

“This scandal raises serious legal, ethical and competitive concerns and may constitute a broader state-sponsored strategy by the People’s Republic of China to unfairly compete in the Olympic Games in the same way as Russia previously did,” said the Chinese Communist Party Select Committee . said in the letter to the Department of Justice and the FBI.

The case was also raised at a congressional hearing last month, in which large michael phelps said athletes have lost faith in WADA as the global watchdog that tries to keep cheaters out of sports.

Officials at the Montreal-based agency declined an invitation to attend the hearing, saying it would be “inappropriate to be drawn into a political debate before a U.S. Congressional committee about a case from a different country, especially while an independent review into the handling of WADA case is ongoing.”

That review report is pending from a WADA-appointed representative former public prosecutor in the Swiss canton of Vaud, home to the International Olympic Committee and the governing bodies of many Olympic sports.

U.S. Anti-Doping Agency Chief Executive Travis Tygart suggested to the Associated Press that an ongoing federal investigation could leave sports officials who travel to the U.S. “afraid that they may have to answer FBI questions about their activities.” .

The US will host the 2028 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles, and in Paris on July 24 the IOC must confirm Salt Lake City as host of the 2034 Winter Games.

The Rodchenkov Anti-Doping Law, named after a whistleblower who exposed Russian state-backed doping, passed with bipartisan support. It has received widespread support from the global sporting world for its aims to criminalize doping.

However, WADA lobbied against which he considered a risk of exaggerating the “extraterritorial” jurisdiction that could be given to US federal agencies, and the The IOC also expressed concerns.

The Rodchenkov Act, Tygart said, “was enacted in 2021 with broad government support from athletes, sports and multinationals because WADA could not be trusted to be a strong and fair global oversight body to protect clean athletes and fair sports.”

___ Pells reported from Denver, Colorado.

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