‘WADA shame’: U.S. Senate panel dives into Olympics doping

A Senate subcommittee on Tuesday heard a lack of confidence in the World Anti-Doping Agency’s ability to combat cheating at the Olympics.

The hearing, “WADA Shame: Swimming in Denial Over Chinese Doping,” comes after an April 2024 report detailed how top Chinese swimmers tested positive for a performance-enhancing drug just months before they were allowed to compete in the Tokyo Olympic Games in 2021. Some of the athletes who tested positive for the drug trimetazidine, dubbed TMZ, went on to win Olympic medals, including three gold medals.

In response to continuing concerns about the World Anti-Doping Agency, the U.S. government declined to pay about $3.6 million to it in 2024. The U.S.’ contribution to WADA accounts for about 6% of its annual budget.

The Senate Subcommittee on Consumer Protection, Technology, and Data Privacy hearing came as the United States is currently preparing to host the 2028 Summer Olympic Games in Los Angeles and the 2034 Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City, Utah.

“This wasn’t just a lapse in judgment. It was a cover-up,” Sen. Marsha Blackburn, R-Tenn., who chairs the subcommittee, said in her opening statement, referencing WADA’s handling of the allegations against the Chinese athletes who tested positive for TMZ. Blackburn noted that WADA officials had refused to appear before the committee to answer questions.

Among the witnesses called to testify were Katie McLaughlin, who won the silver medal in the 4×200-meter freestyle in the 2021 Tokyo Olympic Games, and Travis Tygart, the chief executive officer of the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency, a nonprofit founded by the U.S. Olympic Committee.

“[I]t broke my heart and my teammates’ hearts because, Madam Chairwoman, clean athletes carry the weight of sacrifice and discipline and transparency, and when that’s not honored, it undermines the whole point of what we’re fighting for,” McLaughlin said about the swimmers who had tested positive for the banned drug.

“What’s particularly disheartening as well is to learn that the powers that be, WADA, is supposed to be the one holding everyone to the same standard, is not holding everyone accountable,” McLaughlin said.

Tygart said that potentially as many as 96 medals at the 2021 and 2024 Olympic Games were affected by reputed failures to catch dopers.

“These 96 medals were potentially impacted by China, sweeping dozens of positive tests on their elite-level swimmers under the rug, while the global regulator, the World Anti-Doping Agency—otherwise known as WADA—did nothing about it.”

Tygart recommended that WADA should be audited and that the U.S. government should continue to withhold taxpayer funding for WADA until it makes reforms.

“Let me be very clear: We need a strong WADA. We support the mission, but we need a WADA that is truly independent, a global regulator, not a lapdog to interests other than anything besides clean athletes and parents and sport,” Tygart said.

He noted that it seemed unlikely that contamination of the Chinese athletes with TMZ was an accident.

“TMZ is a prescription medication in some countries. It does not just show up in the kitchen. It’s unbelievable to think that, you know, Tinker Bell showed up and sprinkled it in the kitchen,” he said.

James Fitzgerald, a spokesman for WADA, told The Daily Signal, “All the evidence in these cases pointed towards no-fault contamination and the advice to WADA, including from external legal counsel, was that had it taken appeals to [the Court of Arbitration for Sport], it would have lost all of them.”

WADA also disputed the idea that the Chinese athletes cheated.

“Any suggestion that the athletes would have benefited, to other athletes’ detriment, at the Tokyo Olympics seven months later or at the Paris Olympics more than four years later is absurd,” Fitzgerald said, adding, “To suggest without evidence that these athletes from China have cheated is factually wrong and deeply unfair.”

WADA pointed to an investigator’s report as exonerating it from claims of pro-China bias.

“The Chinese cases were first made public in April 2024, and WADA responded quickly, thoroughly and transparently. By July 2024, an independent prosecutor, Eric Cottier, had conducted a thorough review, which determined that WADA showed no bias towards China, that the Agency’s decision not to appeal the cases to the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) was reasonable based on the evidence, and that it followed the rules at all times,” Fitzgerald explained. “WADA’s Executive Committee (ExCo), which included America’s representative at the time, Dr. Rahul Gupta, welcomed the conclusions.”

Cottier’s impartiality has been questioned, given his previous role as the attorney general of Vaud, the Switzerland canton where WADA has its Swiss office.

Fitzgerald also said the hearing “was intended by [the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency] simply to undermine confidence in the global anti-doping system, sow division within the anti-doping community, and distract from its own failures to address serious deficiencies with anti-doping in the U.S.”

WADA also said it was taking steps to address concerns about its anti-doping policies, including adopting recommendations based on a working group that included a representative of the American government and establishing a working group on drug contamination of athletes.

[Editor’s note: This story originally was published by The Daily Signal.]