China doping controversy casts a shadow over Olympic swimming

Hong Kong CNN —

Within 72 hours of the start of the Paris Olympics, star Chinese swimmer Zhang Yufei had already climbed the champions’ podium twice. The former gold medalist won two bronzes as China fights to best rivals like the United States and Australia.

But the wins for Zhang, dubbed China’s “butterfly stroke queen,” have come under scrutiny – both from her legions of fans and the wider sporting world.

The Chinese team is at the center of a controversy that’s roiled international sport following revelations that nearly half the group Beijing sent to the Tokyo Olympics in 2021, including Zhang, had months earlier tested positive for a banned performance enhancing substance.

The swimmers had been cleared by China’s Anti-Doping Agency (CHINADA) shortly before the Tokyo Games, after it ruled that the positive tests for banned heart drug trimetazidine — believed to aid endurance and recovery time — were the result of contamination, likely from a hotel restaurant. The global sports doping watchdog World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) accepted the assessment without an appeal.

But the situation, first reported by the New York Times and German public broadcaster ARD in April, has sparked backlash in the swimming world, where doping can result in years-long bans for athletes who violate the rules. The Times reported that Zhang was one of the swimmers who tested positive at the time.

Concern only deepened Tuesday, after WADA acknowledged a separate 2022 case in which two Chinese swimmers tested positive for “trace amounts of a prohibited substance metandienone,” a banned anabolic steroid. They were provisionally suspended but later cleared of a violation by CHINADA – again citing contamination linked to food, WADA said.

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