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Chinese diplomat slams US for questioning anti-doping rulings

"China believes that the United States has no right to dictate or interfere in the global anti-doping system or the Chinese anti-doping system," Lin Jian noted

BEIJING, July 10. /TASS/. The United States has no right to question the decisions of international anti-doping bodies, Chinese Foreign Ministry Spokesman Lin Jian said at a news briefing on Wednesday.

"The United States continues to whip up groundless accusations attacking relevant international organizations with the aim of slandering outstanding Chinese athletes and putting their participation in the Paris Olympic Games in doubt," Lin stated.

"China believes that the United States has no right to dictate or interfere in the global anti-doping system or the Chinese anti-doping system," the diplomat added.

On April 21, The New York Times daily reported that 23 top Chinese swimmers had tested positive for a banned substance, the drug trimetazidine (TMZ), seven months prior to the Tokyo Olympic Games in 2021.

The World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) later said that it never punished the Chinese athletes because it could not refute information from the China Anti-Doping Agency (CHINADA) that the athletes had been exposed to the prohibited substance inadvertently.

At that time, the CEO of the United States Anti-Doping Agency (USADA), Travis Tygart, accused the global anti-doping body and China’s anti-doping regulator of deliberately concealing the positive test results.

The Chinese side acknowledged that the swimmers had ingested the banned drug unwittingly and in tiny amounts and that this warranted no action against them, the NYT said. A probe by the Chinese antidoping regulator showed that contamination might have been the source of TMZ.

Earlier in the day, Xinhua news agency reported citing an independent prosecutor’s report, that "The World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) did not show ‘favoritism or deference, or in any way favored’ the 23 Chinese swimmers who tested positive for trimetazidine (TMZ) due to food contamination in 2021."

According to the Chinese news agency, "WADA held an online extraordinary Executive meeting on Tuesday [July 9] in Montreal discussing the interim report delivered by Independent Prosecutor Eric Cottier, regarding his review of WADA's handling of the China Anti-Doping Agency's (CHINADA's) no-fault contamination case involving 23 swimmers from China in 2021… In the report, Cottier concluded that WADA had been unbiased and reasonable in handling the case."

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