Chinese Relay Gold Medalist Tang Muhan Tested Positive in 2022
When China won gold in the women’s 800 freestyle relay at the Tokyo Olympics, two of its members, Yang Junxuan and Zhang Yufei, had previously tested positive for banned substance trimetazidine (TMZ), only for China’s anti-doping agency (CHINADA) to rule the swimmers were not at fault, issue no sanction and not publicly disclose the outcome of these tests. Now, reports have indicated another of the Chinese swimmers taking part in that relay tested positive one year later.
According to new reporting from The New York Times, Tang Muhan was one of two swimmers to record positive tests for methandienone, a steroid used to build lean muscle. Tang swam the second leg of China’s winning relay three relays ago, and she is again a member of the relay team at the ongoing Paris Games. Tang was not among the 23 swimmers who tested positive for TMZ in 2021.
The other swimmer to record an adverse finding in 2022 was He Junyi, who was previously one of the 23 to test positive for TMZ one-and-a-half years earlier. He is not part of the Chinese delegation in Paris.
But just like in the earlier, well-publicized situation, Chinese officials determined that food contamination was the cause. According to Times reporting, the drug was traced to a hamburger Tang ate at a Beijing restaurant.
An investigation seeking to find the source “focused on the possibility that the swimmers had eaten hamburgers made with beef from cattle that had been fed anabolic steroids.” CHINADA was unable to find the source of the beef and of the steroid but still chose to clear Tang and He late last year. An explanation provided to the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) and World Aquatics justified the decision by emphasizing “that only trace amounts of the steroid had been detected and said that those levels were consistent with contamination, not doping.”
No provisional suspensions for the two swimmers were ever announced, but Tang and He were not present in competitions in 2023. He still has not returned, while Tang began racing again late last year, when details of the case were still under wraps, before earning her way to Tokyo.
The Times report confirmed that WADA “did not dispute the facts of the case” but insisted that its investigation had been thorough. “In the end, there was no evidence to challenge the contamination scenario presented by the athletes and CHINADA.”
Officials from the International Testing Agency told the Times that World Aquatics should have appealed the CHINADA’s decision to impose no sanction, but World Aquatics responded that it never received a recommendation.
Still, the disclosure of further positive tests will only inject further controversy into the Chinese swimming team. Its swimmers have come under global scrutiny prior to the Paris Olympics and at the Games. Meanwhile, the decision by World Aquatics and WADA to not publicly announce the test results will stir further discontent among those key figures in the sport who no longer trust the leading organizations to stage clean competition.
Read the full reporting from The New York Times here.
UPDATE: WADA released a statement addressing the newly-uncovered positives. The global authority noted that the swimmers were “provisionally suspended, pending investigation and remained so until late 2023 when the investigation concluded. Therefore, in the case of the two swimmers, they were suspended for more than one year.”
WADA defended the process by which CHINADA investigated the positive tests, noting that it tested ‘hundreds of meat samples from various sources, with dozens revealing positive results for methandienone.’ Because of those investigations plus other negative samples returned, “CHINADA concluded that the four cases were most likely linked to meat contamination and, in late 2023, closed the cases without asserting a violation.”
And as has been the organization’s pattern in recent months, it placed blame for the increased controversy on the reporting.
“The politicization of Chinese swimming continues with this latest attempt by the media in the United States to imply wrongdoing on the part of WADA and the broader anti-doping community,” the statement said. “As we have seen over recent months, WADA has been unfairly caught in the middle of geopolitical tensions between superpowers but has no mandate to participate in that.”
Read the full statement here.
Read more:
- American Swimmers Told of Chinese Doping Violations at Tokyo Olympics
- 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
- Is Caeleb Dressel Confident in Clean Olympics? ‘No, Not Really’
- Zhang Yufei Denies Wrongdoing in First Public Comments Since Positive Test News
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You know the one thing I noticed from this . That media with the anti China sentiment keeps omitting the need to know context that is clearly written in the WADA press releases.
WADA consistently explained that the amount of the drug was well below the minimum reporting requirements. Only small traces which had negligible effects. And it’s widespread in the meat samples.
Yet such basic info keeps being omitted to degrees despite no impartial media should leave that key background info out.
Sigh! It seems that it’s impossible to find even one article that explains all the key info in WADA’s report and seems most mainstream media articles are pushing the “China are cheats” angle hard in this nationalistic atmosphere.
Communist countries have a long history of doping their athletes to improve their athletic performance. They are also fairly sophisticated in knowing how to do so while avoiding positive test results. The East German women rarely tested positive despite how much they were doped up. The IOC also has a long history of corruption, and the Chi-Coms are don’t have much reticence before buying and blackmailing the governments of other nations. Viewed against this history, there is every reason to believe that the Chi-Coms have cheated here and that WADA was “encouraged” to reach the results that the Chi-Coms wanted.