China swimmers: WADA reject cover-up charge, Beijing labels reports ‘fake news’

Banka said “no credible evidence of wrongdoing was provided by any source who came forward on this file, so the threshold for WADA intelligence and investigations to open an investigation was not met”.

One of the options that WADA had would have been to take the case to the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) and challenge the Chinese anti-doping body (CHINADA) decision.

WADA has made such moves in the past but Banka said that was not an option in this case.

He said the body had “no credible way to disprove the contamination theory that was accepted by CHINADA, a position that was also accepted by World Aquatics.

“In short, if we had taken such an appeal and challenged the contamination explanation, we would certainly have lost,” he said.

WADA’s general counsel, Ross Wenzel, said such an appeal’s chances of success at CAS would have been “close to zero”.

Banka questioned Tygart’s motives for his criticism of WADA.

“I have to say that from our perspective, look(ing) at the comments on social media and the official statements from USADA, it is obvious that most of the comments are politically motivated and without any evidence that there was something, on our side, wrong,” he said.

The WADA president said there was no question of his body being overly lenient on Chinese athletes.

“It is worth pointing out that at the same time as our experts were reviewing this case in 2021, we are also vigorously pursuing justice in the case of another swimmer from China, Sun Yang,” he said.

Three-time Olympic champion Sun is about to finish a second doping ban. His first, in 2014, was for taking TMZ.

Wenzel said WADA was going through comments made by USADA and others in media reports and a documentary by German broadcaster ARD with a “fine tooth comb” and that the body would “take whatever action is necessary”.