With a report medal haul, are China’s swimmers too good to be true?

After securing Olympic gold in the men’s 4 x 100m medley relay last weekend, the four victorious Chinese swimmers raised their arms aloft and roared in delight.

By clocking a time of just over three minutes 27 seconds, the Chinese had finally ended the United States’s 64-year unbeaten record in the event.

For the Chinese swimmers, it was the culmination of a lifetime’s hard work.

Or was it?

The reality is that the Chinese swimming squad has been at the centre of a doping scandal so serious that it threatens not only the integrity of the Paris Olympics but the very soul of competitive swimming.

According to an investigation by the New York Times, published in April this year, 23 Chinese swimmers tested positive for a drug called trimetazidine (TMZ) in the months leading up to the Tokyo Games (held in 2021 due to the pandemic).

To the consternation of many, five of the tainted swimmers went on to win medals – including three golds – in Japan.

And then, just last week, 11 of the 23 who had returned a positive test took to the pool in Paris. Among them, two of the men who helped secure that historic relay gold: Qin Haiyang and Sun Jiajun.

How can it be that athletes who had tested positive for performance-enhancing drugs, ended up standing on the podium in Paris with gold medals around their necks?

Adam Peaty, the three-time British Olympic champion who was a member of the British team that finished fourth in the medley relay, didn’t hold back.

‘There’s no point winning if you’re not winning fair,’ he said. ‘I think you know that truth in your heart.’

The Olympics is supposed to showcase great feats of human athletic achievement. But with swimmers allowed to compete despite previously testing positive for banned substances, this surely risks turning such high ideals into farce.

The swimmers identified by the New York Times were cleared of cheating by officials from the China Anti-Doping Agency (CHINADA), who claimed they had unwittingly ingested negligible amounts of heart medication while staying at a hotel during a domestic swimming competition.

TMZ is used to treat heart conditions such as angina. But because it helps to metabolise fatty acids more quickly, TMZ can aid high-level sporting performance by increasing the flow of blood to the heart and thus boosting oxygen circulation around the body.

According to CHINADA, traces of TMZ were found in spice shakers kept in the kitchens of the Huayang Holiday Hotel in Shijiazhuang. The agency did not, however, explain how a prescription heart drug found its way into the hotel’s kitchen.

Remarkably, the World Anti-Doping Agency (Wada) chose to accept China’s bizarre explanation, citing ‘a lack of credible evidence’ to the contrary. ‘Ultimately, we concluded there was no concrete basis to challenge the asserted contamination,’ said WADA’s senior director of science and medicine, Oliver Rabin.

What makes this all the more bizarre is that TMZ was the very same drug that led WADA to ban the Russian figure skater Kamila Valieva for four years ahead of the Beijing Winter Olympics in 2022.

At best, this ruling is inconsistent. At worst, it appears an egregious double standard.

The United States Anti-Doping Agency (USADA) was understandably enraged by WADA’s inaction, with chief executive Travis T. Tygart describing WADA’s ruling as ‘a stab in the back of clean athletes and a deep betrayal of all the athletes who compete fairly and follow the rules‘.

And the drama didn’t end there.

An investigation by German public broadcaster ADR reported that not all the 23 Chinese swimmers linked to the doping scandal were staying in the hotel where the alleged contamination took place.

This spurred the US into action. The Rodchenkov Act, named after Russian whistleblower Grigory Rodchenkov, gives American prosecutors the power to seek fines of up to $1 million (£787,000) and prison sentences of up to ten years for doping conspirators at events involving US athletes, broadcasters and sponsors. The FBI duly began a deep dive into Chinese doping.

However, in July this year, it emerged that Olympic chiefs had issued an ultimatum to the US: halt any investigation into Chinese doping or risk losing the right to host future Olympic Games.

I find it difficult not to conclude the International Olympic Committee (IOC) is more interested in avoiding scrutiny of the Games than in preserving their integrity.

Unsurprisingly, Chinese athletes have responded bullishly. Qin Haiyang, 25, took to social media earlier this week to issue an aggressive response to Adam Peaty’s comments.

‘Some tricks aim to disrupt our preparation rhythm and destroy our psychological defence!’ the swimmer wrote online, in a style reminiscent of Chinese Communist Party propaganda posters. ‘But we are not afraid. When you have a clear conscience, you do not fear slander.’

But it’s not just previously accused swimmers – such as Haiyang – who have come under scrutiny. Arguably one of the most impressive Chinese athletes at these Olympic Games is 20-year-old Pan Zhanle, the swimming superstar who won the 100 m freestyle final, smashing his own world record by four-tenths of a second with a time of 46.40 seconds.

While Zhanle has never tested positive, for some, the margin of victory was too good to be true.

‘I am angry at that swim,’ said elite Australian swimming coach Brett Hawke. ‘You don’t win 100 m freestyle by a body length on that field. You just don’t do it. It is not humanly possible to beat that field by a body length.’

Hawke claimed on Instagram: ‘If it seems too good to be true, it probably is.’

Veteran pros such as Hawke have every right to be suspicious of Chinese swimmers. The nation’s most celebrated performer, Sun Yang, served a four-year doping ban (reduced on appeal from eight years) for smashing blood vials during a 2018 drugs test. He had already served a three-month ban in 2014 for testing positive for a performance-enhancing substance.

But the sad reality, of course, is that doping allegations – and convictions – are as old as the modern Games.

The first documented instance of Olympic doping dates back to St Louis in 1904 when the American marathon runner Tom Hicks took a small amount of the stimulant – and poison – strychnine at the 22-mile mark. He won the race but then collapsed, and it took four paramedics to resuscitate him.

Testosterone was first synthetically produced in 1935, allowing athletes to boost levels of the muscle-growth hormone. This is widely believed to have led to freak performances such as Soviet weightlifter Arkady Vorobyov lifting twice his bodyweight at the 1956 Melbourne games.

Doping began to happen on an industrial scale during the Cold War when sporting victories were marketed as proof of the superiority of one political system over another.

Over three decades up to the late 1980s, East Germany ran one of the most systematic doping operations ever, involving an alleged 9,000 athletes. The scale of the operation emerged only after the fall of the Soviet Union, when incriminating documents were unearthed by molecular biologist Dr Werner Franke and his wife, Brigitte Franke-Berendonk.

Evidence of a state-sponsored performance-enhancing drug programme in Russia came to light in 2014 when a former Russian anti-doping official – Vitaly Stepanov – blew the whistle on the practice before, in fear of his life, claiming asylum in America.

Five years later, Russia was banned from all major sporting events, including the Olympic Games, for four years. Its doping suspension was lifted in 2023 but the World Athletics Council ruled that Russia should remain banned ‘for the foreseeable future’ because of the invasion of Ukraine.

The Olympic Games has always been an exercise in political peacocking. With over three billion people tuning into Paris 2024, it’s no surprise each nation wants to put its best foot forward.

Securing gold at the Olympics has become a symbol of collective national strength as much as individual athletic prowess.

Now, many believe China is the latest nation determined to lay claim to that global kudos – whatever the cost.