‘Athletes around the world deserve to know they are competing on a fair and level playing field at the Olympic and Paralympic Games.’
Bipartisan lawmakers introduced legislation that will cut U.S. funding to the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) if the organization fails to implement governance reforms. The proposal was made amid controversy over Chinese swimmers being allowed to compete at the Olympics despite testing positive for a banned substance.
Rep. John Moolenaar (R-Mich), Rep. Raja Krishnamoorthi (D-Ill.), alongside Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn), and Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.) introduced the Restoring Confidence in the World Anti-Doping Agency
Act of 2024 on July 30.
If passed, it will grant the Office of National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP) the authority to withhold U.S. membership funding to the global sports anti-doping body.
“Athletes around the world deserve to know they are competing on a fair and level playing field at the Olympic and Paralympic Games. This bicameral, bipartisan legislation will show Olympians and the world that the United States Congress has the backs of athletes that compete clean and with integrity,” Moolenar
said in a press release.
The legislation “will help keep the world of sport free of performance-enhancing substances by ensuring anti-doping standards are enforced properly, thereby maintaining the integrity of the Olympic and Paralympic Games for clean athletes around the world,” said Krishnamoorthi, who is also chairman and ranking member of the House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).
The bill was introduced in response to an April report by The New York Times that WADA cleared 23 Chinese swimmers to compete at the 2021 Tokyo Olympics despite having tested positive for the prohibited substance trimetazidine. The Chinese swimming team won six medals. According to the report, the Chinese anti-doping agency “secretly cleared them of doping.” WADA accepted China’s explanation that the positive tests were due to food contamination. WADA did not intervene or launch its own investigation into the case. The report also found that the FBI was aware of the incident.
WADA confirmed the agency cleared the Chinese swimmers. “Ultimately, we concluded that there was no concrete basis to challenge the asserted contamination,” WADA’s senior director of science and medicine, Olivier Rabin,
said in an April press release.
If made into law, the legislation would provide ONDCP tools to ensure that WADA has an independent governance model, implements all governance reforms, and allows independent athletes from the United States and other democratic countries to hold decision-making roles in the global doping watchdog.
If WADA fails to do so, the bill requires the United States to cut funding.
A WADA spokesperson told The Epoch Times in an email that “This politicization of anti-doping is only serving to weaken confidence in the global anti-doping system, which ultimately does not benefit athletes from the U.S. or anywhere else. WADA always endeavors to protect clean sports and treat athletes fairly, regardless of where in the world they are from.
“WADA is encouraged by the full and unambiguous support pledged last week by the U.S. Olympic and Paralympic Committee for WADA and its clean sport mission. We remain ready to work with all our stakeholders to ensure that the U.S. can retain its integral role within the harmonized anti-doping system,” the statement said.
The United States is the largest financial contributor to WADA. Last year, Washington
provided around $3.4 million out of the $45 million WADA received, representing 7.6 percent of the total contributions. This year, the United States has not
contributed any money to the agency.
In May, less than 100 days before the Paris Olympics, Moolenar and Krishnamoorthi
requested the Department of Justice and the FBI to investigate the case. “This scandal raises serious legal, ethical, and competitive concerns and may constitute a broader state-sponsored strategy by the People’s Republic of China (PRC) to unfairly compete at the Olympic Games in ways Russia has previously done,” the lawmaker’s
letter to the two agencies stated.
The international swimming federation, World Aquatics,
said in early July that its top administrator has been subpoenaed to testify as a witness in a U.S. criminal investigation into the case of 23 Chinese swimmers.
Last week, the International Olympic Committee (IOC)
awarded Salt Lake City the 2034 Winter Olympics and demanded that Utah officials end the FBI investigation into the Chinese doping case or risk losing the Olympics.
Moolenaar
criticized the IOC move. “This brazen attempt by the IOC and WADA to force Utah to interfere in an investigation would win the gold medal in blackmail,” he said.
In the latest development, on July 30, WADA released a
statement acknowledging that more Chinese athletes from different sports besides swimming have tested positive for a prohibited substance. The doping watchdog said the Chinese anti-doping agency investigated these cases, which later concluded that athletes might be exposed to meat contamination and closed the cases without issuing any violations.
“WADA thoroughly reviewed the cases in early 2024 with all due skepticism and concluded that there was no evidence to challenge contaminated meat as the source of the positive tests,” it said.
Micheal Phelps Suggests Lifetime Ban
In June, former Olympics swimmer Micheal Phelps
testified before Congress in a hearing about “Examining Anti-Doping Measures in Advance of the 2024 Olympics.”
“Close friends were potentially impacted by WADA’s failure to follow its own rules in investigating the nearly two dozen positive tests on Chinese swimmers,” he said.
“If we continue to let this slide any farther, the Olympic Games might not even be there,” he
added.
“Right now people are just getting away with everything,” Phelps said. “If someone does test positive, I’d like to see a lifetime ban.”
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
