Answers needed over China's swim drug tests: Australia

SIA chief executive David Sharpe has written to the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) asking for clarity around how it handled the positive drug tests of 23 Chinese swimmers.

The swimmers tested positive to the banned substance trimetazidine (TMZ) seven months before the Tokyo Olympics of 2021, but were still allowed to compete at the Games.

Sharpe called on WADA to initiate an independent review of the regulatory framework and processes applied in the case.

"It's important to break this down in clear, concise facts to ensure confidence in the world anti-doping system can be restored," Sharpe said in a statement on Thursday.

Sharpe, while stressing he wasn't alleging wrongdoing, said Australian and other athletes around the world needed trust in the system for it to work.

WADA last week said it stood by its decision to clear the 23 Chinese swimmers who tested positive for the banned heart medication before the Tokyo Olympics.

It said it agreed with Chinese authorities and ruled that the swimmers' samples were contaminated.

The contamination was accepted to have come from spice containers in the kitchen of a hotel where some of the Chinese team stayed for a national meet in January 2021.

Chinese authorities handling the case after testing the swimmers in January 2021 cleared them without any penalties.

WADA accepted their conclusions, and sending independent investigators to China that year was not feasible during the COVID-19 pandemic.

"We had no credible way to disprove the contamination theory," WADA prosecutor Ross Wenzel said last week, adding there was no political pressure to drop the case.

CHINADA, China's anti-doping agency, said the positive results had been inadvertent.

It said the swimmers tested positive for "extremely low concentration" of TMZ after inadvertently being exposed to the substance through contamination and should not be held responsible for the positive results.

Australian Associated Press