Adam Peaty, a three-time Olympic gold medallist from Great Britain, called on the World Anti-Doping Agency (Wada) to do their jobs right and stated that Chinese athletes who are deemed to be cheating should be removed from the sport.
In the men’s 4×100-metre medley relay, China won gold in 3 minutes, 24 seconds, surpassing the US by 0.55 seconds and the bronze-winning French team by 0.92 seconds. Peaty, whose British team placed fourth overall with a performance record of 3:29, hinted that there might have been more going on in the race.
The athlete said: “In sport, one of my favourite quotes I’ve seen lately is ‘There’s no point in winning if you don’t win it fair’… I think you know that truth in your heart… Even if you touch and you know you’re cheating, you’re not winning, right?”
“So, for me, if you’ve been on that and you have been contaminated twice, I think as an honourable person, it means you should be out of the sport. We know sport is not that simple,” Peaty added.
Discontent with the system
Peaty claimed he kept quiet about the issue during the Games in order to maintain his composure, but that he finally felt it was appropriate to voice his displeasure with the system.
He declared: “We’ll see how they do in four years’ time, but I think the people that need to do the job will wake up and do the job… We’ve got to have faith in the system, but we don’t… It’s just got to be stricter. What I’ve said from the start is that it is a fraud. If you’re cheating, it is fraud.”
Qin Haiyang and Sun Jiajun, two of the four swimmers from China’s relay team, were among the 23 swimmers who tested positive for a prohibited heart medicine prior to the 2020 Tokyo Games, but Wada let them compete in Paris. Wada supported its ruling, but subsequently, two swimmers who tested positive for a prohibited steroid in 2022 have been accused of doping again, as reported by The New York Times.
While he believes the two situations are unjust, Peaty clarified that he does not mean to generalize about all Chinese athletes. He said: “I don’t want to paint a whole nation or a whole group with one brush, I think it’s very unfair… But there have been two cases of it and I think it’s very disappointing, and I’ve tried to keep out of the conversation until now for the betterment of the team… I think we’re going to use that to our advantage the next four years, whether I’m there or not.”
A number of Chinese swimmers, like Qin and 10-time Olympic medallist Zhang Yufei, have defended themselves, saying that their opponents are threatened and that they are innocent of any doping charges. Athlete Qin remarked: “Some tricks aim to disrupt our preparation rhythm and destroy our psychological defense… But we are not afraid.”
Source: South China Morning Post