Britain's Olympic 100m breaststroke champion Adam Peaty has weighed into the controversy over 23 Chinese swimmers who tested positive for doping in 2021 but were cleared by global guardians of clean sport.

"I want a fair fight. And if it’s not fair then it takes the enjoyment out for me, so I just do what I do," says Peaty.

On social media and in several interviews since the 2021 positives for heart-booster trimetazidine (TMZ) were revealed by media in April this year, Peaty made clear that he's unimpressed by the handling of the latest China Crisis in his sport.

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The 23-g0-free saga comes on the back of three decades of constant challenges to clean sport in ways specific to China, including the involvement of a large number of young teenage girls throughout that period and high-profile male winners in the past 15 years.

Peaty is resigned to hoping that he will enter a fair fray and lean on his own preparation and adherence to the regular anti-doping checks and controls under which most athletes endure as a necessary part of life as an elite athlete, regardless of cases like that in Chinese swimming still under scrutiny because significant decisions were taken in circumstances that did not involve any on-the-ground independent checks inside China at the time 23 swimmers returned 28 positives.

With a nod to his own plans and hopes, Peaty said: “That’s all I can control, give my best preparation and at this point in time it would just be a distraction to think anything else, because there’s nothing really I can do.”

At the International Olympic Committee’s opening news conference on Saturday, an IOC spokesman indicated the Chinese case is closed.

“As we already said many times, there was a report by an independent prosecutor who found that WADA had acted properly and that there seemed to be no case to answer,” Mark Adams said before leaping ahead to reveal that the full report of the investigator, despite fresh evidence, will not criticise Wada. Adams added:

“As far as we’re concerned, the interim report - and we’ve had indications from the investigator that the full report will be the same - has found that there is no case to answer. The ITA particularly will continue to do targeted testing and that may or may not include those athletes.”

That begs the Question: how can a process be said to be 'independent' if the 'independent' investigator is leaking his 'findings' to the IOC, which is not supposed to touch anti-doping processes, before releasing his final report at a time when new evidence has come to light in the China Crisis?

Wada's response to that question is this: "The reason we (and the IOC) know that the independent prosecutor’s full report will not contradict his interim report in terms of its overall conclusions is because he states that in the interim report."

They cite the phrase in Eric Cottier's interim report that states: “Thus, without going into a level of detail reserved for the full report to be submitted at a later date, the Investigator gives the answers to the questions submitted to him in the answers set out in paragraph III above. The full report, without modifying said answers, will further develop the reasoning.” 

We're happy to make that clarification from Wada, even though it answers a point directed at the IOC, not Wada.

What the Wada response does not address is the point about the IOC opining in any way about the final report. Had the spokesman said "we await the final report" and cite you the story so far, fair enough. However, the IOC response left the impression of 'case closed', which is bound to go down like a led balloon with athletes and others at the Games.

What point is there in issuing an interim report if that report allows the IOC on the eve of an Olympics to tell the World media that it seems that Cottier has "found that there is no case to answer."?

None of any of that, of course, will change the nature of the coming nine days of racing at Paris La Defense Arena and the media scrutiny that is inevitable and is likely to go well beyond the brief of Eric Cottier for one simple reason: the questions raised by the events of 2021 go beyond that brief, too.

Beyond that, World Aquatics has already let it be known that the Chinese are being targeted, with an obligation to be tested at leat eight times by international agents in the six months before Paris. Some athletes have made clear that that, too, is unimpressive, in that they face at least four International tests and many more national tests in the same period, some indicating that they get tested at least every fortnight.

Testing figures posted at the ITA also suggested that Chinese swimmers, to lesser or greater extent, have been 'targeted' for international testing in the past two years.