BEIJING, April 22. /TASS/. Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Wang Wenbin dismissed reports alleging that Chinese swimmers tested positive for a performance-enhancing substance before the Tokyo Olympics as untrue.

"Corresponding reports are untrue and out of bounds," Wang said at a news briefing on Monday.

According to the Chinese diplomat, the Chinese athletes were not guilty of doping as they "did not show negligence or commit a doping violation." The Chinese government has always had zero tolerance for doping, as it has acted in strict compliance with global antidoping rules, Wang said.

On April 21, The New York Times 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 as it failed to refute information from the China Anti-Doping Agency (CHINADA) that the athletes had been exposed to the prohibited substance inadvertently. The CEO of the United States Anti-Doping Agency (USADA), Travis Tygart, accused the global antidoping body and China’s antidoping 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.