After the revelation in April that 23 elite Chinese swimmers had tested positive for a banned substance months earlier than the final Summer time Olympic Video games, China and the worldwide antidoping authority vigorously defended their choices to permit them to compete within the Video games in 2021. The swimmers, they insisted, had not been doping.

However as they made these claims, China and the antidoping authority had been each conscious that three of these 23 swimmers had examined optimistic a number of years earlier for a special performance-enhancing drug and had escaped being publicly recognized and suspended in that case as effectively, in line with a secret report reviewed by The New York Occasions.

In each situations, China claimed that the swimmers had unwittingly ingested the banned substances, an evidence considered with appreciable skepticism by some antidoping specialists. The 2 incidents add to longstanding suspicions amongst rival athletes about what they see as a sample of Chinese language doping and the unwillingness or lack of ability of the worldwide authority, the World Anti-Doping Company, to take care of it.

The three Chinese language athletes revealed to have examined optimistic earlier, in 2016 and 2017, had been no bizarre swimmers: Two would go on to win gold medals on the Tokyo Olympic Video games in 2021, and the third is now a world-record holder. All three are anticipated to contend for medals once more on the Paris Video games in July.

Antidoping specialists say that if Chinese language officers and WADA had abided by present guidelines with each units of optimistic assessments, the athletes would have been publicly recognized and topic to additional scrutiny, and will have been disqualified from the 2021 Olympics, and probably the Video games that open in Paris subsequent month.

“Athletes we’ve spoken to are appalled with the antidoping system and WADA,” mentioned Rob Koehler, the director basic of World Athlete, a gaggle working for athletes’ rights. “Athletes are anticipated to comply with the antidoping guidelines to a T, however but the very group holding them accountable doesn’t should.”

In an announcement to The New York Occasions, WADA confirmed that the three Chinese language swimmers had examined optimistic for what it known as “hint quantities” of a banned steroid, clenbuterol. It blamed the 2016 and 2017 instances on meals contamination, which is labeled “pervasive.” It revealed its lengthy response on-line on the similar time it was emailed to The Occasions.

“The problem of contamination is actual and well-known by the antidoping neighborhood,” the WADA director basic, Olivier Niggli, mentioned.

“The athletes in query had been three such instances,” he added. “They had been elite degree swimmers who had been examined on a really frequent foundation in a rustic the place meat contamination with clenbuterol is widespread so it’s hardly stunning that they may very well be among the many lots of of athletes who additionally examined optimistic for tiny quantities of the substance.”

WADA described the athletes’ ranges of clenbuterol as “so low that they had been between six and 50 instances decrease than the minimal reporting degree.” However neither the company nor Mr. Niggli supplied any clarification for why the swimmers weren’t publicly recognized for having any quantity of their programs.

World Aquatics, the worldwide governing physique for swimming, additionally confirmed on Friday that the three Chinese language swimmers had beforehand examined optimistic for clenbuterol.

“We will verify that there have been optimistic assessments for clenbuterol in 2016 and 2017 that concerned Chinese language athletes,” the group mentioned in an announcement. The group, beforehand referred to as FINA, mentioned it had discovered data of the optimistic assessments in its archives from a interval when it had a special administration workforce.

“If any data involves mild which means that the instances ought to have been handled otherwise, then we are going to, after all, take a look at it very rigorously,” the group mentioned, including that it expects to publish findings of an antidoping audit overview within the subsequent few weeks, together with “clear tips on how related instances ought to be dealt with in future.”

The small print in regards to the optimistic assessments in 2016 and 2017 had been included in a confidential report written by Chinese language antidoping authorities that was used to clear the 23 swimmers in 2021, and given to WADA on the time.

The Chinese language argued within the report that the 23 swimmers had been unknowingly contaminated with a coronary heart medicine that was someway current in meals ready for them at a home competitors. That principle rested on the declare that two months after the optimistic assessments, Chinese language investigators had found hint quantities of the medicine, trimetazidine, referred to as TMZ, within the kitchen of the resort the place the swimmers had stayed.

TMZ, which might help athletes improve stamina and endurance and hasten restoration instances, is in a class of performance-enhancing medication that comes with the harshest penalties.

To bolster the argument that contamination was an actual chance, the Chinese language doc cited different “mass incidents” during which 12 Chinese language water polo gamers and 13 different athletes had been unwittingly contaminated with banned substances due to meals they’d eaten. Amongst these earlier instances, the Chinese language mentioned, had been the incidents in 2016 and 2017 during which the three high swimmers had examined optimistic for clenbuterol.

However in citing these earlier instances, the Chinese language solely raised extra questions on their historical past of coping with optimistic assessments.

Beneath established protocols for such assessments on the time, even when the outcomes had been believed to have been attributable to meat contamination, China and WADA would nonetheless have needed to publicly determine the athletes and examine the supply of the contamination. There isn’t any indication that these steps had been adopted in any of the instances documented by the Chinese language.

Clenbuterol was for years fashionable amongst athletes as a result of it could possibly cut back weight and promote muscle progress. Due to its effectiveness in boosting athletic efficiency, WADA contains it in a class of medication that include the harshest penalties, together with four-year bans from competitors.

On the similar time, it is usually utilized in some components of the world to advertise progress in livestock. That has led to contamination instances involving athletes who eat meat from animals handled with it — a phenomenon that China’s antidoping company detailed in a presentation that’s still available on WADA’s website.

The Chinese language antidoping company didn’t reply to questions from The Occasions.

WADA — which is meant to protect in opposition to nations that fail to police doping by their athletes — took Chinese language officers at their phrase in 2021 that the 23 swimmers had completed nothing incorrect. It didn’t conduct its personal investigation in China, and it allowed Chinada, the Chinese language antidoping company, to sidestep guidelines and processes that others are obligated to comply with because it cleared the athletes.

The dearth of motion from WADA, which has cited coronavirus restrictions as an evidence, paved the best way for China to ship the 23 swimmers to the Summer time Olympic Video games in 2021, the place practically half of its workforce was made up of athletes who had examined optimistic for TMZ. On the Video games, Chinese language swimmers who had examined optimistic received medals in 5 occasions, including three golds.

After the revelations, WADA and swimming’s governing physique each introduced opinions of the dealing with of the instances. However that has solely raised new considerations. WADA, already below fireplace from athletes and coaches, was compelled to handle claims that its handpicked prosecutor lacked independence. World Aquatics, in the meantime, faced accusations from a member of its personal antidoping advisory group that it had been “inexplicably and forcibly shut out of the overview.”

Amid the outcry, WADA officers have sought to defend themselves in a spread of private and non-private briefings, together with a convention name with journalists, a discussion board with lots of of athletes and a hurriedly scheduled video name with its personal board members.

On one such name, WADA’s basic counsel, Ross Wenzel, regarded immediately into his pc digital camera and advised board members that there had been no doping by the Chinese language swimmers.

Whereas it’s unclear how a lot Mr. Wenzel knew about particulars within the Chinada report that had been shared with WADA, he and different company officers have repeatedly supported their resolution to clear the swimmers by pointing to a robust statistic: Not one of the Chinese language swimmers, Mr. Wenzel advised the board members, had produced a doping optimistic outcome within the three years earlier than the 2021 incident, regardless of being “topic to vital, if to not say huge, testing.”

What Mr. Wenzel didn’t share in these conferences in April and early Might was the swimmers’ doping data earlier than 2018. However WADA — which had been given the key Chinese language report in 2021 — had by then recognized for years that China had cleared the three swimmers with clenbuterol positives in 2016 and 2017.

In its report, China even recognized the three athletes by title: Wang Shun, who on the Tokyo Olympics turned the second Chinese language man to win a person gold medal in swimming; Qin Haiyang, the present world-record holder within the 200-meter males’s breaststroke; and Yang Junxuan, who was 14 or 15 on the time of her optimistic take a look at in 2017 however went on to win gold and silver medals on the Tokyo Video games.

In April, Yang set the Chinese national record within the ladies’s 100-meter freestyle.

As WADA famous in its assertion on Friday, the problem of contamination positives for clenbuterol in the end turned so frequent that WADA modified its tips in 2019: The drug would nonetheless be banned and regarded within the class that comes with the harshest penalties, however the threshold for a optimistic outcome was raised.

Nonetheless, below WADA’s guidelines and procedures on the time, athletes who claimed clenbuterol contamination had been required to determine the supply of the contaminated meals they’d eaten and to acquire proof that it was certainly contaminated. This was a excessive bar to clear, and plenty of athletes failed to take action — typically resulting in multiyear bans.

Even when the Chinese language athletes had been in a position to show the contamination, nonetheless, below the foundations in place in 2016 and 2017 their nation’s antidoping company was required by WADA’s code to publicly disclose that they’d examined optimistic. And if the athlete had examined optimistic throughout a contest, their outcomes had been imagined to be stricken from the official data.

But within the case of the three Chinese language swimmers, there isn’t any indication that China’s antidoping company adopted these guidelines, neither is there something within the public report documenting that the athletes examined optimistic.

In accordance with China’s timeline, their optimistic assessments in 2016 and 2017 occurred because the nation was confronted with an excellent earlier accusation of unpunished doping amongst its swimmers.

In 2016, The Occasions of London, citing whistle-blowers in China, reported that the Chinese language authorities had been masking up 5 optimistic doping assessments as a result of they wished to keep away from disclosing them earlier than the trials for that yr’s Summer time Olympic Video games in Rio de Janeiro.

The day after the Occasions of London article was revealed, China’s antidoping company publicly acknowledged that six of its swimmers had examined optimistic for banned medication. Three of these positives had occurred six months earlier, in 2015, it mentioned, and had been for clenbuterol. China declined to determine the opposite substances or the names of any of the athletes.

On the time, WADA was engulfed in a separate scandal involving Russia’s state-backed doping program. It responded instantly, describing the allegations about Chinese language positives as “very severe” and vowing to take care of the scenario “head on.” But no recognized formal motion was ever taken.

The invention of much more hidden positives, and the prospect that among the athletes concerned will compete for medals on the Paris Olympic Video games, is nearly incomprehensible for different Olympians, mentioned Mr. Koehler, of World Athlete.

“It’ll convey athletes’ confidence within the system to an all-time low, which I didn’t suppose was doable,” he mentioned.