Chinese swimmers are at the center of a sizeable Olympic controversy.
China stunned the United States team by winning a gold medal in their 4×100 medley on Sunday, marking the first time Team USA didn’t win gold in the event since 1980 — an Olympic Games in Moscow that they didn’t even compete in.
Qin Haiyang and Sun Jiajun, along with 23 other Chinese swimmers, tested positive for a banned substance at the Tokyo Olympic Games in 2021 but were allowed to compete anyway.
The China Anti-Doping Agency determined the culprit for the positive test was consuming contained food, a decision upheld by the World Anti-Doping Agency.
Britain’s Adam Peaty, whose team finished fourth in the race, just missing out on a medal, has questions about the legitimacy of China’s performance.
“If you touch and you know that you’re cheating, you’re not winning, right?” said Peaty, a three-time gold medal winner for Great Britain in his career. “I don’t want to paint a whole nation or group of people with one brush, I think that’s very unfair.”
He later made a plea for people to “do their job” as it relates to incidents like this.
“To the people that need to do their job – wake up and do your job.”
At the time of the controversy, which surfaced just before the Olympic Games of 2021 — delayed a year due to COVID — the World Anti-doping Agency maintained that they were “not in a position to disprove” the conclusion of China’s Anti-Doping investigation.
