Olympic star fears Chinese swimmers’ failed drugs tests risk ‘tarnishing’ sport ahead of Paris 24
Words by ITV News Sports Producer Joe Wardropper
Britain's Olympic swimmer Matt Richards says the news that 23 Chinese athletes who tested positive for a banned substance were allowed to compete in the 2021 Tokyo Olympics risks undermining his sport’s reputation, less than 100 days ahead of the Paris Games.
"I’ve had seven drugs’ tests in 2024, and we’re not even in May yet... I can stand here categorically and say I’m clean in every way there is and to know you have to race against people who maybe aren’t taking this as seriously is really frustrating," he told ITV News.
The Chinese swimmers’ positive tests emerged after a joint investigation by The New York Times and the German broadcaster ARD.
The World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) had accepted the explanation of authorities in China that the swimmers had unknowingly consumed food contaminated with trimetazidine, a potent heart drug, during a training camp held months before the 2021 Olympics in Tokyo.
The boss of the US Anti-Doping Agency accused WADA of having "swept these positives under the carpet," something the global authority described as "outrageous, completely false and defamatory."
"As soon as public opinion about how clean a sport is starts to go downhill," Mr Richards told ITV News. "It’s a slippery slope, and it’s very quick that the whole sport is tarnished with the same brush.
"I know some of the guys on the Chinese team, I’m friends with some of those guys and I get on with them, I don’t know whether or not they are clean, I don’t know whether they are doping, for all I know, they might not know, even if they were doping, it’s a really tough one," Mr Richards said.
"I was there, I was in the apartment building with the guys like Duncan Scott who was beaten by one of the athletes named in that list and could be stood here as an Olympic champion individually," he added.
Duncan Scott - his teammate in the gold medal winning 4x200m freestyle relay team in Tokyo - lost out in the 200m men's medley to Wang Shun, one of the Chinese swimmers who tested positive for the banned drug.
On Saturday, Mr Richards’ Olympic teammate James Guy, wrote on X: "Wow. Ban them all and never compete again."
"I don’t know that banning them all is the right option," Mr Richards told ITV News. "Because there will be guys in there who are clean...It does make you question things when you see 23 athletes from the same country, at the same camp, all test positive for the same drug."
China’s anti-doping agency said maintained that doping reports are "misleading" and said the swimmers had inadvertently tested for "extremely low concentrations" of the heart medication.
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