The Daily - The Doping Scandal Rocking the Upcoming Olympics

Episode Date: June 27, 2024

A new doping scandal is rocking the world of competitive swimming, as the Paris Olympics approach. These allegations are raising questions about fairness in the sport and whether the results at the summer games can be trusted.Michael S. Schmidt, one of the reporters who broke the story, explains the controversy and what it reveals about the struggle to police doping in sports.Guest: Michael S. Schmidt, an investigative reporter for The New York Times.Background reading: Chinese swimmers twice tested positive for drugs. They kept on swimming.U.S. swimming stars assailed the World Anti-Doping Agency ahead of the Olympics.For more information on today’s episode, visit nytimes.com/thedaily. Transcripts of each episode will be made available by the next workday.

From The New York Times, I'm Natalie Ketroef. This is The Daily. A new doping scandal is rocking the world of competitive swimming as the Paris Olympics approach. Those allegations are raising questions about fairness in the sport and whether we can trust what we see at these summer games. Today, one of the reporters who broke that story, Mike Schmidt, explains the controversy and what it reveals about the struggle to police doping in sports. It's Thursday, June 27th. Mike, on Tuesday, we saw two stars of American swimming testify before Congress,

where they questioned the fairness of their own sport and of the Olympic Games. This was a pretty remarkable moment. Tell me about what happened. Mr. Chairman, members of the committee, good evening. My name is Michael Phelps, and I come before you... Michael Phelps, the most well-known swimmer probably in American history. Thank you for this opportunity to address to you today on a matter of crucial importance as we approach the 2024 Olympic Games. And Alison Schmidt, one of the most accomplished female swimmers in American history,

went up to Capitol Hill to essentially say they had lost complete faith in the system that is supposed to ensure that there's a level playing field when you sit down and watch Olympic athletes compete. And they started their argument by telling the story of what it's been like to be them. There are times where I would be blood and urine tested twice a day. They could be within a 30-minute window. They're taking four to six vials of blood every time they test. To be Olympic athletes who gave basically all of their privacy over to a drug testing system.

From filling out forms to update our whereabouts every hour of the day. Where their whereabouts was always known so a drug tester could find them. Pulling our pants down below our knees, pulling our shirts up to our breasts, and having them watch the pee come out. And where it was so invasive that they had to urinate directly in front of a tester. I knew at 17 years old, 16 years old, that I was signing my privacy, my rights away for fair sport and clean sport.

They're basically saying, look, in the hopes and dreams of their being fair sport, they would play by the rules and wouldn't use drugs they weren't supposed to, but would also essentially open their lives up to drug testers. And Mike, if I understand it correctly, part of the reason they're so enraged is that they say this isn't happening everywhere. Other countries aren't doing this. They're saying the more that we learn about how this system works around the world, the more that we learn that not everyone is being held to the standard that we were held to.

There was a stat back in 2016 when I was swimming that I had over 150 drug tests during that year. There were other delegations as a whole that were having 30 or 40. Because of that, how can we trust anything that we see that goes on at the Olympics? And honestly, I think if we continue to let this slide any farther, the Olympic Games might not even be there. Okay, so why now? Why are they coming to Congress and saying this right now? These decorated swimmers were up on Capitol Hill because of a story my colleague Tarek Panja and I wrote two months ago.

my colleague Tarek Panja and I wrote two months ago. The story begins at the height of the pandemic. It was early 2021. The Summer Olympics were just a couple of months away, and the Chinese Swimming Association wanted to hold a meet swimming association wanted to hold a meet to essentially allow their swimmers who had been training in seclusion to practice competition. So all of the elite Chinese swimmers congregated in the same city south of Beijing. And there, over several days, they swam against each other. The swimmers, like they normally are at major meets, were being drug tested. But what no one knew was that 23 out of the 39 athletes who were tested showed that they all had the same performance-enhancing drug in their system.

That's a lot of positives. I mean, 23 out of 39 is more than half of everyone tested. It's a staggering number, and it's all for the same drug, a drug called trimetazidine. It's known as TMZ. It's a prescription heart medication used to treat people that have chest pains, that have angina. It's supposed to make the heart work more efficiently and allow those with heart disease to exert themselves in ways that they're often unable to. So this helps for training? Correct. This drug is popular amongst dopers for several reasons.

It allows you to train harder. And if you train harder, that means that you will be in better shape and more capable when you finally get to a competition. It's also attractive because it quickly clears through an athlete's system. So if an athlete is trying to find a window between drug tests to use a drug, this would be a good one because it's not going to stay in your system for too, too long. And Mike, I'm assuming this drug then is on the banned substances list. It's penalized harshly.

The drug is classified in the highest level of substances that can help an athlete. If you have any amount of it in your system, you're potentially on the hook for a four-year ban. Wow. So for the Chinese, this was a nightmare scenario. It's just months before the Summer Olympics, scenario it's just months before the summer olympics and you're looking at the possibility of essentially half of your swimming team not being able to go to the games because they were doping okay so what happens what do they do so the chinese engaged in a wide-scale investigation and scientific research effort to explain what happened.

And we know this because we've obtained a lengthy secret Chinese document that lays out how they investigated the positive tests. that lays out how they investigated the positive tests. They brought in the top law enforcement agency in the country to investigate it. And they said that a couple of months after the athletes tested positive, investigators found trace amounts of TMZ in the kitchen of a hotel where the athletes were fed. They say that this prescription heart drug was found in spice containers, in the hood over the grill, and in the drainage.

So the Chinese anti-doping agency finds that all of these swimmers test positive for this drug that should prompt suspension. But instead of suspending them, they say these swimmers tested positive because of contamination, not because they were intentionally doping to improve their performance. The Chinese say that this was evidence that the athletes had been contaminated with the drug. And because of this explanation, we are not going to discipline the swimmers. But what the Chinese are unable to explain is how the drug got into the kitchen and why it was there. It sounds like there's a lot that is unexplained in all of this. I mean, the entire theory seems a little questionable. There are contamination cases and there are drugs that sometimes end up in food because they're given to cows and athletes eat the cows and it's in their system.

TMZ is not one of those drugs. This is a prescription heart medication. And the Chinese are unable to explain why a prescription heart medication ended up in a kitchen or how the athletes even ingested it. And under the code that is supposed to govern Olympic athletes, you can have what are called essentially no-fault contaminations in which an athlete is not penalized for testing positive for a drug. But to do that, you essentially need to prove exactly how it happened.

And the Chinese explanation, according to anti-doping experts who've looked at this and studied it, doesn't rise to that level. And not to hit you over the head with more inside doping code minutiae. Under the way the system is supposed to work, each country is supposed to police their own athletes. If those countries fail to do that properly, the World Anti-Doping Agency, this entity that is supposed to ensure the level playing field in Olympic sports, is supposed to step in and essentially take over and prosecute the case to make sure that the rules are followed and that athletes are properly disciplined. Okay, so what do they do in this case? In this case, the World Anti-Doping Agency essentially comes in, looks at the Chinese explanation, and accepts the rationale that these athletes were contaminated with this prescription heart drug.

And without anyone knowing, these swimmers who tested positive head to the 2021 Olympics and have some of the greatest success in Chinese swimming history. A male swimmer who had tested positive for TMZ becomes the second man in Chinese history to win a gold in swimming. A female swimmer who had tested positive won two gold medals and one silver. And the most dramatic example comes in the women's 4x200 relay race. China up for the challenge. Talent across the Chinese team. They're the Asian Games champions. Two of the four swimmers on the Chinese team had tested positive for TMZ. United States of America.

United States are in lane five. Allison Schmitt, Paige Madden, Katherine Makoko, Katie Ledecky. For the United States, Allison Schmitt, who testified on Capitol Hill, is the first swimmer in the water. Looks as though China getting off to a good start. For much of the race, China and Australia are neck and neck. But the Australians still can't shake off the attentions of China. Zhang is remaining tough, and what a way to do it. 200 flying, even coming back on the Australians now. But then...

While Ledecky is racing in the water for the USA, the USA could steal this whole thing with Ledecky now. In the final leg, Kate Ledecky, the greatest female swimmer of her generation, gets in the water and closes the distance. I think we may have a change of leader when it comes to the 50 meters to go mark. China just hanging on.

Ledecky, what has she got left? She loves to race for the stars and stripes. Look at that underwater. This is a wild finish at the end of the women's 4x200 freestyle. China have broken Australia, but Katie Ledecky on the charge. And as it comes down the stretch, the United States pulls into second. China still in front, fast finishing. Katie Ledecky is giving everything to this final.

And in the final moments. With five meters to go, can China hang on? As the swimmers are approaching the wall. China's strike gold, just in front of the United States. It's a new world record, of course it is. A Chinese swimmer hits the wall first by less than half a second, giving China the gold and the United States the silver. And what a swim from the Americans.

You write them off at your peril, and that's what it means to China. A world record, a huge world record, 740.33. And their first gold medal in the 4x200 freestyle relay at the Olympic Games. What a team. I honestly have chills hearing this. I mean, this is an extremely tight race, which we're now learning based on your reporting was potentially fundamentally unfair. And as Phelps and Schmidt said when they testified before Congress, all of this calls into question the larger system. Was the system that was supposed to ensure that athletes were all competing on the same playing field, was that functioning?

Was this a race in which athletes were showing their natural abilities or that something else was at play? We'll be right back. Mike, let's talk about that larger system that failed to expose these positive tests by Chinese swimmers, that kept these tests hidden. It sounds like one potential issue is that the system relies on self-policing, on the idea that countries will punish their own athletes when they find evidence of doping, which doesn't totally make sense to me, if I'm honest. There are these perverse incentives, right,

for many countries to not actually root out doping when they find it because, I mean, number one, they want to win medals, and number two, they don't want to damage the reputation of their athletes. Why does the system work this way? One of the reasons that it was set up this way is that it was just too logistically hard

to have the World Anti-Doping Agency, also known as WADA, trying to track thousands and thousands of Olympic athletes around the world. They needed the countries to be able to administer the testing and to prosecute the cases because it would have been too much. It would have been too cumbersome. But for there to be checks and balances and for independence and rules and facts to be followed, WADA was supposed to make sure that those countries were doing their job, that they were holding their athletes accountable, and they had the power to step in.

And in those cases in which they said, hey, this doesn't look right, more needs to be done, they could come in and prosecute the cases. But what happens here is that when WADA finds out about this, and they get this explanation from the Chinese, they essentially take it at face value. They don't insert themselves, as they've done in other cases to try and discipline the athletes and keep them out of the water. And because the system is so reliant on trust and on WADA doing their job to make sure that everyone's following the rules, when WADA's credibility comes into question, the whole system comes into question. When WADA's credibility comes into question, the whole system comes into question.

And that's the point that Phelps and Schmidt were making when they were sitting before Congress under oath. They were saying, can this thing, this thing that athletes have given themselves to, that they have allowed into their lives to ensure that they and others are following the rules. Is this thing legit or is it a charade? Mike, it feels like a lot of this comes down to a pretty central question, which is why did WADA, this institution that's supposed to be a backstop, just accept China's explanation for the doping, which, as you've said, seemed a little suspect. Wada says that it accepted the Chinese argument basically because all of the athletes had similarly low levels of this drug in their system. The science looked like it had come from ingestion. All of the swimmers who tested positive were staying at the same hotel.

Swimmers who had not been staying at the hotel did not test positive. And that it was just simply too hard to disprove what the Chinese were putting forward. And that if they tried to prosecute the case themselves, they wouldn't have been successful and they wouldn't have been able to stop them from competing at the Olympics. But a lot of people don't buy it. They don't buy that that was enough to not do anything. And look, we don't know the answer.

We don't have full visibility into what went down here. WADA has appointed a investigator to look into this to see whether they gave China preferential treatment and whether this was handled properly. That report is supposed to come out before the Olympics. But in the void, as people have looked at this, they have speculated about why is it that this happened. And one of the theories put forward, a sort of dark one, has been WADA didn't want to embarrass China, especially at a time when China was moving heaven and earth to do the Olympic movement a solid by holding the 2022 Winter Olympics in Beijing,

games that they were trying to pull off at the height of a pandemic in a country that was shut down. And other theories have been that the Olympic movement doesn't really want to go out and tarnish their own sports and put out there the notion that these games may not be being played on a level playing field. But Mike, doesn't it tarnish the sport more to find evidence of doping and not report it?

I mean, doesn't it damage the reputation of swimming, of the Olympics, to not come clean about this stuff? Not if you're able to keep it secret. Because if you're able to keep it secret, then you don't ever have to deal with the ramifications of it. But if, in the lead-up to an Olympics, you had to suspend half of a country's swimming team so they couldn't compete, that would cast a really dark cloud over the games. And at the end of the day, there's an

enormous amount of money on the line here. And sports first instinct is not necessarily to tarnish its own product. As much as these games are about athletics and competition, it's about making money. And do you want to tarnish that product? Do you want to undermine it in the eyes of fans and raise the question, oh gosh, is this really a level playing field? Or are there cheaters who are out there? And if it remains secret, you don't have to deal with that. And the only reason we know about this case is because of your reporting, which makes me wonder whether you

think there may be other examples of this that we haven't yet heard about. Look, I don't know what I don't know, but the problem is, is that when you learn about things like this, it calls everything else into question. If this was happening here, why was it happening, and what does it mean for everything else? After all your reporting, Mike, I have to ask if you actually think that we can trust what we see in the Olympics next month, that we're going to be watching the best athletes from all over the world who've trained for years for this

put their bodies to the test and achieve these miraculous feats based not on drugs, but on their merit. I mean, when you watch the Olympics, will you trust that? Well, we know that 11 of the Chinese swimmers who tested positive for TMZ will be going to this Olympics in Paris to compete. They have faced no consequence and will be in the water swimming against American swimmers who have, you know, been subject to this rigorous drug testing program.

But I've wondered about this question too, right? What should we think when we tune into the Olympics? Should we look at it and sort of just kind of let it go and enjoy it for what it is? Or should we look at it more skeptically? I don't really know the answer. So what I did was I went to the chief broadcaster of the Olympics, NBC, and I asked them essentially that same question. I said, as the entity that is in charge of putting this thing out,

that is in charge of the pipe in which everyone will get the Olympics, are you confident that you'll be broadcasting an Olympics in which the athletes will be competing on a level playing field. And NBC acknowledged receiving the email. They said that they got it. And they never got back to me. And in all of this, it was a bit telling that the chief broadcaster of the Olympics couldn't answer the basic question about whether fans could trust what they're going to be seeing.

Mike, thank you so much. Thanks for having me. We'll be right back. Here's what else you need to know today. The Supreme Court handed the Biden administration a victory in a First Amendment case on Wednesday. It was a case that involved government officials urging social media platforms to take down posts on topics like the coronavirus vaccine and election fraud, which they believed were spreading misinformation. Two Republican attorneys general and several others had sued, arguing that that communication violated the First Amendment. But the court rejected their argument in a 6-3 decision, with Justice Amy Coney Barrett

writing the majority opinion, where she said that the plaintiffs didn't have standing to sue because they hadn't suffered direct injury. And the Supreme Court looks poised to temporarily allow abortions in Idaho when a woman's health is at risk. That's according to Bloomberg News, which obtained a copy of an opinion that briefly appeared on the court's website. If that document reflects the justice's final decision, it would reinstate a ruling by a lower federal court that paused Idaho's near-total ban on abortion to allow hospitals in the

state to perform the procedure in emergencies in order to protect the health of the mother. Today's episode was produced by Ricky Nowetzki, Carlos Prieto, and Michael Simon Johnson. It was edited by Lisa Chow, contains original music by Marion Lozano, Alisha Baetup, and Dan Powell, and was engineered by Chris Wood. Our theme music is by Jim Brunberg and Ben Landsberg of Wonderly. That's it for The Daily. I'm Natalie Ketroweth. See you tomorrow.