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UPDATED: A leading Australian swim coach has launched a passionate defence of China following bombshell claims that members of China’s record breaking team tested positive for banned substances before the Tokyo Olympics.
Denis Cotterell – who coached Australia’s Grant Hackett to several gold medals – has worked with the Chinese Swimming Association for the past two years.
Speaking to The Sydney Morning Herald from China on Sunday, the 74-year-old steadfastly denied claims of systemic doping within the organisation.
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“I am happy to say I’m absolutely in support of my swimmers and dispute any suggestion of anything orchestrated,” Cotterell told the Herald.
“I see what they go through. I see the measures. I can tell you the stories. I know the facts and I am comfortable.
“The suggestion that it’s systemic is so far from anything I have seen here the whole time. That suspicion was unfortunately earned from 30 years ago in the 1990s. They are so adamant on having clean sport.
“It’s sad to see what this suggests or looks like. It’s unfortunate for everyone. I feel for the athletes here because of how hard they work now to eliminate the tag that was garnered in the ’90s.”
Swimming Australia is conducting its “own inquiries” with World Aquatics in the wake of the allegations coming to light over the weekend.
SA issued a statement on Sunday after Australian superstar Ariarne Titmus reacted to the “raw” news by calling for a level playing field in Paris on Nine’s Weekend Today.
“Our expectations are high when it comes to advocating clean sport,” SA chief executive Rob Woodhouse said.
“Right now, we are 50 days out from our Olympic trials and less than 100 days out from the opening ceremony – and we welcome the stringent testing our athletes face to ensure a level playing field.
“As an organisation we will always advocate for fairness and integrity, and we believe that all athletes deserve the right to earn success by their own hard work, effort, and dedication.
“Clean sport is about respect for your competitors. It’s about respect for yourself. It’s about respect for sport. At this stage we are making our own inquiries with World Aquatics, until we know more we aren’t in a position to comment further.”
The World Anti Doping Agency earlier said 23 Chinese swimmers were cleared to compete at Tokyo despite testing positive for a banned heart medication because it agreed with Chinese authorities and ruled that their samples had been contaminated.
Australian swimmer Lani Pallister was asked about the scandal on Nine’s Wide World of Sports on Sunday.
“Obviously, if the claims are true, it’s extremely disappointing for the athletes that had those opportunities taken away from them at the Tokyo Games,” Pallister said.
“I wasn’t there. So obviously I can only guess or dream of how they all feel. But, yeah, there’s still more information that has to come out. And I don’t think Swimming Australia has had contact from World Anti Doping or that sort of thing yet, so obviously not all the details are out yet. But yeah, my heart is with the athletes that might be affected by that situation.”
WADA said the swimmers tested positive for the heart medication trimetazidine in the months leading up to the start of the Olympics in 2021 but that Chinese authorities told the agency the positives were the result of contamination.
“Ultimately, we concluded that there was no concrete basis to challenge the asserted contamination,” WADA’s senior director of science and medicine Olivier Rabin said.
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The 30 member Chinese swim team won six medals in Tokyo, including three golds.
Many of the athletes still compete for China and are expected to swim at the Olympics this year.
WADA also responded to what it called “some misleading and potentially defamatory media coverage this week” and explained the process it undertook upon learning about the positive tests.
The global drug fighting organisation said it also had been given a tip by the US Anti Doping Agency as early as 2020 – before this case arose – about allegations of doping cover ups in China but that USADA never followed up with evidence.
USADA chief executive Travis Tygart called the news of the Chinese positive tests “crushing.”
“It’s even more devastating to learn the World Anti Doping Agency and the Chinese Anti Doping Agency secretly, until now, swept these positives under the carpet by failing to fairly and evenly follow the global rules that apply to everyone else in the world,” Tygart said.
World Aquatics told the Daily Telegraph it was confident “that these (adverse analytical findings) were handled diligently and professionally, and in accordance with all applicable anti doping regulations, including the World Anti Doping Code.”
The drug at the centre of this case was also the medication that led to the suspension of Russian figure skater Kamila Valieva at the Winter Olympics in Beijing in 2022.
In that case, WADA moved quickly to sanction Valieva upon learning about her positive test.
The case underscores what many view as a flaw in the global anti doping system – that a country’s own anti doping organisation is often the first line of defense in catching drug cheats and those organisations have different levels of motivation to fulfill that role.