By CNN
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The World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) has commissioned an independent review into its handling of a case involving 23 Chinese swimmers after the organization said that it had been the subject of “damaging and baseless allegations.”
The development comes after WADA was criticized by members of the anti-doping community, sparking a dispute which looks set to overshadow events in the pool at this year’s Olympics in Paris.
Last week, a New York Times report released in coordination with German public broadcaster ARD revealed that Chinese athletes were allowed to compete – and win medals – at the Tokyo Olympics three years ago, despite testing positive for heart medication trimetazidine several months earlier.
The US Anti-Doping Agency (USADA) has been vocal in its criticism of WADA following the publication of the report, accusing the body and Chinese officials of “sweeping these positives under the carpet.”
WADA’s president Witold Bańka has remained adamant that it “followed all due processes” and found “no evidence of wrongdoing” on behalf of the Chinese swimmers.
During a media conference earlier this week, WADA general counsel Ross Wenzel said that trimetazidine was detected in the kitchen of a hotel where the athletes were staying during a training camp.
“We have no evidence of any sort of skullduggery or planting of trimetazidine,” Wenzel told reporters on Monday. “It would have been impossible for us to go to a tribunal and ask them to draw that inference without any evidence.”
In his statement on Thursday, Bańka said “WADA’s integrity and reputation is under attack,” Bańka said in a statement on Thursday.
“In the past few days, WADA has been unfairly accused of bias in favor of China by not appealing the CHINADA [China Anti-Doping Agency] case to the Court of Arbitration for Sport,” added Bańka.
“We continue to reject the false accusations and we are pleased to be able to put these questions into the hands of an experienced, respected and independent prosecutor.”
A statement from CHINADA cited by Chinese state agency Xinhua said the swimmers tested positive for an “extremely low concentration” of trimetazidine at a national swimming event in 2021.
Trimetazidine has the potential to boost endurance and has been banned by WADA since 2014.
CHINADA ultimately decided that the athletes should not be held responsible for the results after its “immediate” investigation concluded that their food was inadvertently contaminated, Xinhua reported.
WADA said that Swiss prosecutor Eric Cottier, attorney general of Vaud in Switzerland for 17 years until his retirement in 2022, will lead the review into the handling of the case.
However, USADA has now accused WADA’s leadership of “trying to pull the wool over our eyes” with the investigation, saying: “The world’s athletes deserve a truly independent review commission with a wide scope of review that is constituted with an independent athlete representative and impartial respected jurists with anti-doping experience appointed by government consensus.”
WADA said that Cottier “will be granted full and unfettered access to all of WADA’s files and documents” related to the 2021 case. He is expected to deliver his findings within two months.
Correction: The headline and first line of this article have been updated to more accurately characterize the case involving the Chinese athletes.
