By On Sunday’s episode of The Excerpt podcast: Athletes have lost faith in the World Anti-Doping Agency, also known as Wada. That’s what we heard from Michael Phelps, the U.S. Olympian with the most medals in history. Phelps made the statement during Congressional testimony he gave in June referring to drug tests given in the leadup to the 2021 games in Tokyo which found that 23 Chinese swimmers tested positive for a banned substance. Eleven of those swimmers will be competing this summer in Paris. Is there any way to restore faith that the Paris Olympics will be fair, or is the taking of banned substances simply the new normal? USA TODAY Sports Columnist Christine Brennan joins The Excerpt to discuss how officials are handling the issue and what to expect next.
Hit play on the player below to hear the podcast and follow along with the transcript beneath it. This transcript was automatically generated, and then edited for clarity in its current form. There may be some differences between the audio and the text.
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Taylor Wilson:
Hello and welcome to The Excerpt. I’m Taylor Wilson. Today is Sunday, July 21st, 2024. Athletes have lost faith in the World Anti-Doping Agency, also known as WADA. That’s what we heard from Michael Phelps, the Olympian with the most medals in history. The statements made by Phelps and fellow Olympic swimmer Allison Schmitt during congressional testimony in June refer to drug tests given in the lead up to the 2021 games in Tokyo, which found that 23 Chinese swimmers tested positive for a banned substance.
11 of those swimmers will be competing this summer in Paris. Is there any way to restore faith that the Paris Olympics will be fair, or is the taking of banned substance simply the new normal? Here to help me unpack the issues as USA TODAY sports columnist Christine Brennan. Christine, thanks so much for joining me today on The Excerpt.
Christine Brennan:
Oh, Taylor, it’s great to be with you. Thanks for having me.
Taylor Wilson:
So Christine, let’s just start here. WADA came out with a review on the 23 Chinese swimmers I mentioned. What’s the latest here and can you help us put this story in context?
Christine Brennan:
Absolutely. Well, this is another generation of swimmers, US and otherwise, going all the way back to the East German cheating of the 1960s and ’70s. Another generation, Taylor, that is basically being cheated out of opportunities to win medals by doping, often by state sponsored doping, doping schemes from countries going all the way back to, as I said, East Germany, the Soviet Union, China, individual athletes like Guy Ireland, Michelle Smith at the 1996 Olympics in Atlanta.
Of course, the Russians with Sochi in 2014, Vladimir Putin’s doping scheme that we believe went all the way up to him. And of course, now the Chinese doping, as you refer to, the 23 swimmers who tested positive seven months before the Tokyo Olympics in the summer of 2021, and no one ever said it out loud. It was all covered up. No transparency whatsoever.
And then they all were allowed to compete in the Tokyo Olympics winning three gold medals and 11 of them will be on the pool deck in Paris in a couple of weeks. So that’s the story. The World Anti-Doping Agency, as you said, conducted an investigation. It was not an independent investigation. They picked the person investigating. And shock of all shocks, they found everything was fine. Everything is not fine.
It’s just stunning to me as someone who’s covered every Olympics, so fortunate that I am, since the 1984 in LA and covered many, many, many doping stories, just stunning to me that 23 athletes, no matter how minimal the amount in their bodies or not of something called TMZ, trimetazidine, which is what Kamila Valieva, the Russian skater also in that scandal in Beijing, which is what she was taking. It is the drug of choice because it’s a heart medicine for older people, but it helps endurance and recovery for young athletes.
Taylor Wilson:
Is there a chance that WADA will be asking China to give those back or where does the story go from here?
Christine Brennan:
What should happen is they should, of course, have already given them back. There is a statute of limitations. It’s 10 years. So that’s the good news. There is a chance. And it happens all the time, the relocation of medals, the International Olympic Committee and doping officials do keep those samples for 10 years. And so if you can wait a few years, the odds are the good chemists can devise a test to find new drugs that were being used a few years earlier.
And so that’s why we’re seeing that and that’s why there certainly is a chance eventually. For example, one of the key medals is the Women’s 4 X 200 Freestyle Relay from the Tokyo Games in 2021. That included Katie Ledecky among others on the US team. And Katie swam an incredible leg to almost beat the Chinese, passed the Australians for second place, the silver medal.
So if it is determined and eventually someone decides that, okay, we’re going to strip the cheating Chinese of those gold medals, that would be one, the 4 X 200, and the US then would rise up to first and the Australians to second to the silver medal. That hasn’t happened yet. It would take I think many more years. But this statute of limitation, there is time and there’s certainly precedent for it. The problem right now is that all the investigating bodies are basically signing off. Nothing to see here. No problem.
Taylor Wilson:
Well, I mean, that’s a great explainer. It gets to the heart of this issue really, Christine, as you’ve mentioned, participating countries have their own anti-doping authorities, and China is responsible for telling WADA to clear its own team members. That does create an obvious conflict of interest, right? And is there or should there be just one organization who has the real authority here?
Christine Brennan:
That would be great, Taylor, to have one organization. The amount of money it would take to have let’s say an independent organization, which would need hundreds and hundreds of testers, will it happen in my lifetime, your lifetime, or the lifetime of a baby that’s just been born this week? Probably not. And that is because the fiefdoms of these countries and the fact that the country says, “Hey, this is our thing. We’re going to be in charge of it.”
And the World Anti-Doping Agency code has all of this, when you think of the US giving basically $3 million to the World Anti-Doping Agency, and that makes the US the big cheese in terms of funding WADA. So that tells you the meager investment that the world is putting into the anti-doping effort. So we’re going to have to get really serious really fast. And where’s that money coming from and where is the initiative to even have that happen? And that’s afraid where we are.
And so we get outraged. People are upset and it’s terrible, and then everyone goes along with their business. I mean, there was, of course, the hearing with Phelps and Allison Schmitt, but will there be hearings in the next few months? Maybe. But will it continue? And those are the questions, where is the initiative and the drive and the desire to have this be a worldwide issue where people will be willing to spend, governments and others, Olympic committees, millions and millions, tens of millions of dollars to do it the right way?
But the knock on the door in February when you’re training is when most of the athletes then would cheat and be using performance enhancing drugs and then get off of them hopefully for them in time to not test positive. So you’ve got to have the wherewithal, the travel around the world and do these knock on the door testing, which I think surprises a lot of people.
That’s what Katie Ledecky, Michelle Kwan, Michael Phelps, Allison Schmitt, Simone Biles, that’s what they put up with every day, the potential that they could get a knock on the door at any time, basically between 6:00 AM and 10:00 or 11:00 at night, and have to produce a urine sample right then and there as a person of their gender is standing there watching. That’s what they do for the honor of representing their country at the Olympic Games. That’s the only way to catch the cheaters, and that is something obviously that’s difficult to enforce around the world.
Taylor Wilson:
Christine, I want to hear a little bit more about those hearings in June. As we mentioned, former Olympic swimmers Michael Phelps and Allison Schmitt warned a House subcommittee about worries the games might be in trouble unless doping issues are addressed with more urgency. What’s the significance of that moment and what can Congress even do about the doping issues?
Christine Brennan:
I think what’s interesting moving forward is the Rodchenkov Act, which was an act named for the Russian whistleblower. This Rodchenkov Act allows the US government to go after the schemes, these doping schemes, and those officials who are either turning a blind eye or missed it or incompetence or whatever it might be. In this case, this Chinese doping, the 23 Chinese swimmers from three years ago.
And so that’s positive. That’s good. If they come into the country, they’re going to be served a subpoena. They’re going to have to testify, and there are potential for criminal penalties. So that’s something, but we’ve got to get very, very serious about this very quickly. And if we all get outraged for a couple weeks and then it goes away, then how in the world does this happen?
Will this impact the Olympics to the point of them potentially not existing anymore? That would be the doomsday scenario. But I think if you can’t trust a 100-meter race, eight men or eight women, just the shoes and their singlets, shorts and singlets, if you can’t trust that, why watch? And that’s the dilemma and I think that is the risk.
Taylor Wilson:
Strong, but fair words, Christine. It’s clear that athletes, at least athletes who are not cheating, are really upset in this moment, have been for generations. What do these athletes really advocate for practically when it comes to corralling doping? What types of testing programs do they really want?
Christine Brennan:
I’ll tell you a story about Katie Ledecky, obviously the greatest female swimmer of all time, not just the US, but around the world. When she’s training, whether it’s Gainesville, Florida, which is where she is now, or in the Washington, DC area, or at Stanford when she was there, if she decides that she needs to get a quart of milk and needs to run to the Whole Foods or the 7-Eleven or whatever, grocery store or quick market somewhere, and needs to leave home for 20, 30 minutes, before she does that, before she gets in the car, she will go on her app on her cell phone, and it would be the US anti-doping app.
And she will put in to her schedule the time that she’s leaving, going down the driveway, and the time she expects to be back and her whereabouts, including, I believe, the address of the Whole Foods or wherever she’s going for that half hour period. Now, why is Katie Ledecky doing that?
Because within that half hour time period, a tester, as I described earlier, the knock on the door unannounced, random testing, the only way to catch people, to really catch people, could knock on her door. And they do that 365 days a year, every single one of our elite athletes in every Olympic sport. Isn’t that unbelievable?
Taylor Wilson:
It’s wild.
Christine Brennan:
If you decide all of a sudden, instead of staying home on a Saturday night to go to a bar with friends, you have to get on the app. If you’re an Olympic swimmer, Olympic athlete, Simone Biles, figure skater, track and field, whoever at that elite level in the Olympic pool, so to speak, the testing pool, you have to do that and then put where you are. Now then you’re fine. Katie Ledecky tells these stories proudly. Michael Phelps tells them proudly because that’s what they do for the honor of representing their country at the Olympic Games.
Taylor Wilson:
Fantastic. Fascinating insight and perspective for us here, Christine. The Olympics just days away. We’ll all be watching with potentially this casting a bit of a cloud over it. Thank you for your time here, Christine. I appreciate you.
Christine Brennan:
No, Taylor, thank you very much. Take care.
Taylor Wilson:
Thanks to our senior producer Shannon Rae Green for her production assistance. Our executive producer is Laura Beatty. Let us know what you think of this episode by sending a note to podcasts@usatoday.com. Thanks for listening. I’m Taylor Wilson, and I’ll be back tomorrow morning with another episode of The Excerpt.
