The World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) will report to its board that U.S. federal officials questioned American employees of the global clean-sport watchdog last month in the inquiry into the agency’s handling of the China-23-go-free saga over positive tests returned by Chinese swimmers at the turn of the year 2020-2021.

In early 2021, Chinese state security agents visited a hotel where national-team-program swimmers had been staying during a training camp and competition some 10 weeks before. Despite the passing of time in an active kitchen at the hotel, the state agents found 'evidence' of mass contamination with a specific heart-boosting drug - Trimetazidine - banned in sport. No explanation was found or given as to how such a substance could possibly have been in the kitchen in such quantities that traces survived in running drains and heat extractors almost three months after the event.

Yet, China persuaded WADA, FINA (since renamed World Aquatics) and the experts it relied on to accept contamination as the only plausible explanation in a country that includes positive Trimetazidine cases, accompanied by suspensions, on its list of doping cases in swimming (among other sports). At the time, neither organisation was able to verify matters in the ground in China because of Covid-lockdown conditions in place but the file was closed and all the swimmers were free to go.

Several of the group of 23 went onto claim Olympic titles and medals at both the Tokyo and Paris Olympic Games in 2021 and 2024, when the story broke after an investigation by German broadcaster ARD's Doping Investigations Unit in Berlin and the NY Times.

The fallout, follow-up documentaries by ARD in which experts questioned the validity of explanations from Chinese state security and subsequent investigations by The Times in London, The Australian and Daily Telegraph Down Under and other media was accompanied by sharp criticism of WADA by USADA and peer organisations around the world.

Athletes weighed in heavily on the way to Paris 2024. The schism that opened up is far from healed. Indeed, the USA has stopped funding WADA, leading to a recent report seen by the NY Times in which Olivier Niggli, WADA’s director general, is citing as telling fellow WADA executives:

“The previous U.S. administration has let down not only athletes worldwide but also U.S. athletes, as they are the ones who benefit the most from all the efforts and programs that are deployed outside the U.S. to support a level playing field.”

Today, here is how head of that ARD unit, Hajo Seppelt, reported from the fringes of what can be covered at the WADA Symposium:

And here is another reason why he says "massively restricted":

FORUM: WADA’s Latest Misstep Confirms A Need For Red Flags & Reminders Of Its Role As Guardian Of Safe, Fair & Clean Sport

In this week’s FORUM: as WADA seeks to suppress Press freedom, it might be wiser to take a history lesson and tighten its collective belt. Why? Our ‘China Crisis: Origins’ starts the SOS explanation; + our timeline of World records in March throughout history celebrates Leisel Jones & Aaron Peirsol

State Of Swimming +Craig Lord

Our reports on the saga can be found in the China Diaries section and in the feature below - China Crisis, Origins - we begin a new series that traces the source of a crisis back to the 1980s and will next look at a story never told about the Chinese coach who travelled to Europe with a large group of teenage swimmers, doctors and drugs in tow at a time when that coach was supposed to have been serving a suspension for a role in the 1998 Human Growth Hormone scandal during the Perth World Swimming Championships that year.

China Crisis: Origins - Political Sports Brothers In Arms, Sisters As Weapons

In Part 1 of a new series in our China Diaries section, we trawl back to the start of a crisis forged in the early days of China’s return to the Olympic fold in the 1980s and the lessons from the GDR dragged unlearned through decades of governance failure on the way to WADA’s plunge into hot water

State Of Swimming +Craig Lord

The NY Times reported recently that The American Department of Justice (DOJ) and F.B.I. investigation into whether the global anti-doping authority and China covered up the positive tests has continued under the Trump administration.

A draft document, which WADA plans to provide to its executive committee for a meeting this month, according to the Times, said that federal officials interviewed an employee of the agency who is an American citizen on February 12 as part of the continuing investigation.

The American investigation is underpinned by a change in the law in the U.S. under the first Administration of Donald Trump that allowed doping investigations too be carried out across borders. That law was ut to the test for the first time under the Administration of Joe Biden. The initial investigation into investigation began when details of the 23-go-free cases and their 28 positive doping testes emerged last year.

The focus of the investigation is reported in the U.S. by the NY Times as "among matters that Mr. Trump and his administration have signalled they are deeply interested in."

In the current environment of flip-flop tariff decisions and so many other decisions by the current White House accompanied by indecision and legal challenge, that view cannot be taken too seriously, especially at a time when the president's son has just invested in the Doping Games, named the Enhanced Games, in which athletes can take substances that are banned by WADA.

While that is not official U.S. Government policy, Donald Trump's apparent endorsement and American support in general for things that carry serious risk to athlete health, carry the potential for a repeat of a time when lesser-known and less-successful athletes were used as lab experiments, GDR-style, ought to be anathema to any signatory of the WADA Code, including the USA and its Team USA.

The latest development about the American investigation that has called in employees of WADA was revealed in a section titled “U.S. Situation”. The 255-page draft report, the NY Times reports, is written by Niggli.

The document said that the interview of the WADA employee was conducted on a voluntary basis and done “in the presence of our U.S. counsel”.

On the matter of the Enhanced Games, WADA sees the weakness in current U.S. position when it comes to support for the Doping Games.

Niggli's report, says the NY Times, takes "aim at a WADA nemesis, Travis T. Tygart, the head of the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency, a longtime critic of the global organization"

WADA notes that Tygart has slammed WADA for its handling of China, but it then states that he needed to be even more vocal about the Enhanced Games, especially when the likes of investor Peter Thiel, a Silicon Valley-based billionaire with German roots, is among backers of the scheme at a time when he is also very close to the Trump Administration.

When Donald Trump Jr. announced his investment in the doping project, his father, the president, was featured in a video on the announcement of the funding stating: “The impossible is what we do.”

The conflict of interest is highlighted by WADA's report, which states:

“Whatever the recent differences between WADA and USADA might have been, we trust and hope that USADA will, in the interest of clean sport, take a strong and principled position on the Enhanced Games and that it will not change tack now that the U.S. has been touted as the host.”

USA Has Stopped Funding WADA

The report also indicates that the USA has not paid into WADA since the flow of money was cut off by the Biden administration in response to the China Crisis and a lack of answers on key questions posed by USADA and media.

Biden and team agreed with USADA and backed a call for action on a range of measures, including an overall audit of how the positive tests of the Chinese swimmers were handled.

The Trump administration has yet to appoint a senior White House drug official.