Opinion | The real international sports scandal is found in America

How many cheats were involved? How many other cheats were caught in those alleged undercover ops? He didn’t say. Were there even such ops? Who knows?

We don’t even know their identities in three cases cited. All we know is that those American cheats were allowed to continue to compete, keep their prizes and retire with honour.

Usada told no one. The World Anti-Doping Agency (Wada) found out on its own. Now Wada has issued a statement.

It said: “Wada is now aware of at least three cases where athletes who had committed serious anti-doping rule violations were allowed to continue to compete for years while they acted as undercover agents for Usada, without it notifying Wada and without there being any provision allowing such a practice under the [global] code or Usada’s own rules.”

The suggestion that the code, the Wada statement continues, “can be used to justify a failure to prosecute a case for years while doped athletes are sent back into the field as undercover informants to compete against clean athletes is obviously wrong”. Only three cases? There are more because Tygart has doubled down and said his agency would continue to use the same undercover tactics.

Usada claims Wada is trying to smear its reputation, even though it admits the facts of the cases. Never mind that those US cases are, as Wada has made plain, against all international sports codes and Usada’s own rules.

That’s assuming those “undercover” ops even existed, and were not fabricated out of thin air to cover up for US cheats.

But assuming such undercover cases are real, just think about it – how convenient that would be for US athletes. You are caught cheating. So you say, OK, take it easy. I will help you catch big-time cheats and their agents and suppliers. In the meantime, let me compete, keep all my prizes and retire comfortably with my reputation intact. Who wouldn’t do it?

The real smear campaign comes from Usada and the mainstream Anglo-American media – and the US Congress – as Usada keeps feeding them stories about Chinese swimming “cheats”. Congress is threatening to cut funding to Wada.

And the FBI and the US Justice Department are investigating the Chinese swimmers. What? Put handcuffs on them when they come to the 2028 Los Angeles Olympics?

There was no Chinese doping scandal. The China Anti-Doping Agency reported to Wada before the Tokyo Olympics that trace amounts of a banned substance were detected in 23 Chinese swimmers. The Chinese said they likely ate contaminated food. Wada examined the evidence and agreed. So conspiracy! The Amercians and some of their Western swimming allies have been shouting on rooftops!

Never mind that the drug, trimetazidine (TMZ), is sometimes found in lean beef and pork. Wada said in a statement: “Apart from China, in particular, there have been several of these cases in the United States in the past few months alone, where highly intricate contamination scenarios were accepted.”

Highly intricate? As in implausible and convoluted? In one case, US sprinter Erriyon Knighton tested positive in March but was allowed to compete in Paris.

Since last year, the Chinese swimmers, including world-record-breaking Pan Zhanle, have been tested till kingdom come, without a single positive. Some scandal!

America makes its own rules, in sports and elsewhere. That’s the rules-based system it lectures others on, as opposed to actual international law and norms which its agencies freely breach, ignore, if not actively undermine. While accusing others, America plays dirtier than most.