As the Olympics heat up in Paris, lawmakers in Washington are trying to make sure the Games are fair.
A bipartisan, bicameral group of lawmakers is introducing legislation that would audit the World Anti-Doping Agency to determine whether it’s operating free from the interference of other governments — and dangles the possibility of the United States withholding funds from WADA if the U.S. doesn’t at least get fair representation within the agency. (Of the annual contributions from foreign governments to WADA, the U.S. makes the largest, around $3.6 million.)
The group — led by Republican Marsha Blackburn of Tennessee and Chris Van Hollen of Maryland in the Senate, and Republican John Moolenaar of Michigan and Raja Krishnamoorthi of Illinois in the House — aims to implement stricter testing standards and ensure there are no conflicts of interest on WADA’s executive committee.
“What we’ve tried to do is immediately raise the alarm so that there’d be much more scrutiny with respect to the process in the current Olympic Games in Paris,” Van Hollen told NOTUS. “The challenge is we really don’t know whether or not, with respect to the current Olympic Games, any of these lessons have been learned because it’s been an opaque process.”
After positive tests went unreported prior to the Tokyo Olympics, there’s little lawmakers can do to address the uncertainty athletes in Paris are feeling today. A New York Times investigation in April revealed that, before the Tokyo Olympics, 23 Chinese swimmers tested positive for the banned substance trimetazidine, known as TMZ.
China’s domestic anti-doping agency claimed the athletes had eaten contaminated food. WADA declined to investigate further and accepted the explanation. All athletes competed in the 2021 Games, with some winning medals.
But there are signs that WADA is taking the concerns that Chinese athletes are doping more seriously. A member of the Chinese team’s support staff claimed on social media that the country’s Olympians were collectively tested nearly 200 times in 10 days after arriving in France.
“It should not be the case, when you’re a swimmer on the block, that you have to worry about whether the person on your left and the right has, you know, used doping and that WADA has looked the other way,” Van Hollen said Tuesday.
Among the swimmers tested the most in 2023, the top 20 were all Chinese. Swimmer Qin Haiyang, who holds the world record time in the 200-meter breaststroke, underwent 46 drug tests in 2023 after winning multiple gold medals at the 2022 world championships, as well as another 21 tests in 2024 prior to the Games. (Qin was one of the 23 Chinese athletes who tested positive for TMZ before the Tokyo Games.)
Australian swimmer Zac Stubblety-Cook said last week that he was considering protesting Qin’s presence in Paris. On Sunday, American Nic Fink took the block next to Qin in the final for the 100-meter breaststroke. In a dead heat, Fink edged out Qin and others to tie Britain’s Adam Peaty for second place. With the race completed, medalists Fink, Peaty and Italy’s Nicolo Martinenghi embraced in the pool. Qin slid past as the trio ignored him.
“They need to know that WADA makes decisions that serve clean sport and clean athletes,” Allison Wagner, a former Olympian, told NOTUS. “There’s a ways to go on gaining that confidence.”
Confidence in WADA has been a problem for years — and tensions between the U.S. and the anti-doping agency have only been growing. During negotiations with Salt Lake City about the 2034 Olympic Games, the International Olympic Committee made an out-of-left-field demand for Utah to lobby against federal investigations into how the positive Chinese tests were handled — or else they may not get the Games.
In June, a House subcommittee invited WADA President Witold Bańka to a hearing on anti-doping regulations. Bańka didn’t show. But Travis Tygart, the CEO of the United States Anti-Doping Agency, and former Olympians Michael Phelps and Allison Schmitt did.
Schmitt was a member of the swim team that took second to a group of Chinese athletes during a Tokyo event. Two of the athletes had previously tested positive for TMZ — and they faced no repercussions.
During the hearing, Rep. Jan Schakowsky of Illinois asked Tygart if any changes could be made before the Paris Olympics.
“I’m afraid not,” he said.
For those competing in France, legislative announcements in D.C. are too little too late. But at least one lawmaker is hoping WADA will take notice of the warning shot in Washington.
“I hope that this is a little bit of a brushback pitch to anybody who intends to dope or to use any banned substances at this Olympics,” Krishnamoorthi said. “Hopefully, this encourages the regulators to be even more vigilant at this point because there’s so many eyes that are watching the results and what’s happening at the competition now.”
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Ben T.N. Mause is a NOTUS reporter and an Allbritton Journalism Institute fellow.