China swimmers: WADA reject cover-up charge, Beijing labels reports 'fake news'

MIAMI: The World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) on Monday (Apr 22) rejected accusations of a cover-up during their investigation into Chinese swimmers testing positive for a prescription heart drug and said they would take "whatever action necessary" in response to the allegations.

Reports at the weekend that 23 Chinese swimmers tested positive for trimetazidine (TMZ) - which can enhance performance - ahead of the Tokyo Olympics in 2021 led to a strong attack from the head of the United States Anti-Doping Agency (USADA), Travis Tygart.

Tygart said that WADA and the Chinese anti-doping body had "secretly, until now, swept these positives under the carpet" and called the situation a "potential cover-up".

The swimmers were allowed to compete after world governing bodies accepted China's findings that they had ingested it unwittingly from food during a meet in late 2020 and early 2021.

Several went on to win medals, including gold, and many are in line to compete at the Paris Olympics this summer.

"What I can say right now is that at every stage, WADA followed the whole due process and diligently investigated every line of inquiry in this matter," WADA president Witold Banka told an online news conference.

"If we had to do it over again now, we would do exactly the same thing."

Banka said "no credible evidence of wrongdoing was provided by any source who came forward on this file, so the threshold for WADA intelligence and investigations to open an investigation was not met".

One of the options that WADA had would have been to take the case to the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) and challenge the Chinese anti-doping body (CHINADA) decision.

WADA has made such moves in the past but Banka said that was not an option in this case.

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