WADA under scrutiny after Chinese swimmers doping clearance

The Chinese swimmers won their Olympic races, stepped onto the podiums and posed for photos with their medals in 2021. Years later, the world learned that they had been cleared to compete despite failing doping tests. The revelation created a crisis for the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA), the group responsible for ensuring fair competition in elite sport. Chinese officials who had conducted the doping tests did not penalise the swimmers, and the agency knew about the tests but chose not to intervene.

Now, in an effort to restore its credibility, WADA is considering a major change to testing rules before major events like the Olympics. After years of largely relying on the biggest nations to screen their own athletes before major international competitions, the agency is moving closer to recommending a new system in which an independent organsation would conduct at least part of the testing.

WADA has commissioned a working group to study the feasibility of such a change. The discussions are occurring too late to affect the Winter Olympics that begin this week in Italy, but they could come into play before Los Angeles hosts the Summer Olympics in 2028. The global authority has strongly denied that it did anything wrong in the 2021 episode, or that the Chinese swimmers should have been barred from competing in the Tokyo Games after they tested positive for the drug trimetasidine, a banned heart medication. The Chinese anti-doping regulator found that the swimmers had ingested the substance inadvertently through food contamination, and although some experts viewed the finding as implausible, WADA agreed with the Chinese account.


When reports of how the tests were handled came to light in 2024, WADA and its longtime director general, Olivier Niggli, faced harsh criticism from some members of the global anti-doping community, notably in the United States. Swimming’s global governing body recommended that WADA stop permitting countries to test their own athletes, a change that WADA is now discussing. In an interview, Niggli said the swimming episode “indicated that the testing of athletes before a major event, which could be an Olympic Games and may be world championships, a portion of it at least should be done by an independent organisation, not by the national antidoping body.”

He added: “The risk is, whether true or perceived, that they might have a conflict of interest or they might be biased, because if the national hero tests positive this could be an issue for the country.” The working group is expected to provide its findings in March. Before Olympic competitions, most anti-doping tests are carried out by national bodies, and by individual federations for some of the biggest sports. The pre-Olympics testing program is devised by the International Testing Agency, a group formed after the scale of Russia’s cheating program was uncovered that is responsible for testing conducted during the Games themselves.

Niggli said that under a new system, testing before competitions could be put in the hands of private companies, which already carry out anti-doping work, or greater responsibility could be given to the ITA. Others are skeptical of the independence of that agency, which receives millions of dollars in annual funding from the International Olympic Committee and includes representatives of the committee itself.