U.S. Sports Officials Warned That 2028 Los Angeles And Salt Lake City Olympics May Be Pulled Over Doping Authority

A dispute between two anti-doping bodies is threatening to derail the 2028 Olympics in Los Angeles and the 2034 Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City.

The increasingly bitter feud between the World Anti-Doping Agency and the United States Anti-Doping Agency stems from an earlier incident.

Close to two dozen Chinese swimmers tested positive for a banned medication at a training camp, but still competed in the 2021 Tokyo Olympics. The World Anti-Doping Agency accepted the findings of a Chinese investigation that blamed a contaminated hotel kitchen for the positive tests, Reuters reported.

The U.S. Anti-Doping Agency accused the World Anti-Doping Agency of a cover-up on the Chinese swimmers. Doping enhances performance and puts clean athletes at a disadvantage.

Salt Lake City was awarded the 2034 Winter Games on Wednesday, but the Olympic Committee warned that it could terminate the agreement “in cases where the supreme authority of WADA in the fight against doping is not fully respected or if the application of the anti-doping code is hindered or undermined.”

The United States Olympic & Paralympic Committee chief Gene Sykes today tried to calm the roiling waters.

“I’ll say this as clearly as I can – we accept, we support, we subscribe to the world anti-doping code,” Sykes told reporters. “What we want to do is to cool the tempers and find a way for these organizations to constructively work better together, and that’s our responsibility. The amendment is only an amendment that allows the IOC to have an escape clause if the United States somehow undermines it with the world anti-doping code. We’re not going to do that. We’re going to try to make it stronger.”

The WADA and USADA feud escalated on Wednesday when Reuters reported that the global body was taking the U.S. agency to the Independent Compliance Review Committee (CRC) next month.

Any country staging an international sporting event must be compliant with the world anti-doping code. If that review went against the U.S. it would have to forfeit participating in and hosting the Olympics.