WADA Declares Operation to Find Leak of Chinese Doping Scandal
The World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) this week has declared a named operation to find the leak of its handling of positive tests within the Chinese swim program in 2021.
WADA has launched what it has dubbed “Operation Puncture,” according to Director of Intelligence and Investigations Gunter Younger. He was quick to say that said operation is not seeking to unmask a whistleblower.
“We’re not chasing the whistleblower,” Younger told reporters at an event in London. “What we want to try to find out is how the leak happened and what was the motivation of the leak.”
The operation is the latest effort for WADA to exonerate itself over its handling of positive tests within a large segment of the Chinese swim program months before the Tokyo Olympics. A group of swimmers tested positive for trimetazidine, a performance-enhancing drug, during a training camp in Guangzhou in early 2021. The Chinese Anti-Doping Agency ruled the tests to be an incidental occurrence of environmental contamination, a decision that WADA quietly assented to. Those swimmers were allowed to compete at the Tokyo Olympics, and WADA apparently had no intention of making the case or its involvement in it public, at least not before said swimmers got a chance to compete in a second Olympics in Paris.
The information was revealed in the spring of 2024, in parallel investigations by the New York Times and German broadcaster ARD. WADA has strenuously maintained its innocence, even paying for an allegedly independent inspector who further exonerated it.
Operation Puncture is aimed, ostensibly, at finding out how the case reached the media. (It is energy WADA is not putting into deciphering how TMZ got into the bodies of the Chinese swimmers, an issue it feels is satisfactorily resolved.)
WADA’s handling of the case set off a firestorm of international controversy, including threats of pulled funding by the United States and other countries. The thin justification WADA is using for Operation Puncture is to determine if political motivation – not, perhaps, some search for public accountability – informed the leak.
Read More
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- 23 Chinese Swimmers Cleared To Compete At Tokyo Olympics Where Some Won Gold Despite Positive Drug Tests: Reports
- WADA Releases Statement on Chinese Doping Positives; Threatens Legal Action
- Column: Lack of Transparency in Chinese Doping Tests a Glaring Failure of Anti-Doping Authorities
- ‘What happened to strict liability?’ Adam Peaty Hits Back at WADA over Chinese Doping
- WADA Appoints Independent Prosecutor to Review Handling of China Doping
- Katie Ledecky on Anti-Doping System: Faith at ‘All-Time Low’ (Video)
- Qin Haiyang, Wang Shun, Yang Junxuan Tested Positive for Clenbuterol Prior to 2021 Positives
- ‘Extremely Frustrating’ and ‘Disappointing:’ Lilly King, Other Americans Share Displeasure at Chinese Doping Controversies (VIDEO)
- Michael Phelps, Allison Schmitt Testify Before Congressional Subcommittee on Anti-Doping Measures, WADA
- WADA-Appointed Independent Prosecutor Exonerates WADA in Chinese Doping Case
- Chinese Doping Controversy Hovering Over Paris Games
- Final Report on Chinese Doping Cases Casts Blame on CHINADA But Clears WADA Again
WADA should be paying the leakers extra for helping them to maintain their transparency.