MOSCOW, July 17 The World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) may find the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency (USADA) non-compliant with its code due to its investigation into Chinese swimmers and strip it of the right to host the 2028 and 2034 Olympic Games, WADA's first president and honorary member of the International Olympic Committee (IOC) Richard Pound told Reuters.
A federal investigation into the positive doping tests of Chinese swimmers began in the United States in early July, in accordance with the «Rodchenkov Act.»
«This law does not comply with the anti-doping code. It seems to me that one of the steps that WADA will take is to refer this issue to the compliance committee. I think that if or when this issue is reviewed, the United States will be declared ineligible. This means that the United States will not be able to host the Olympic Games,” the agency quotes Pound as saying.
«Rodchenkov Act» The law, signed by previous US President Donald Trump and criticized around the world, allows US courts to impose criminal sentences for doping in competitions involving American athletes. It is named after WADA informant and former director of the Moscow anti-doping laboratory Grigory Rodchenkov. The maximum prescribed penalty is ten years' imprisonment.
In January 2021, 23 Chinese swimmers tested positive for trimetazidine, despite this they were allowed to compete in the Tokyo Olympics. Eleven swimmers involved in a doping scandal were included in the Chinese team for the 2024 Games. WADA said in April that it had not punished the Chinese athletes because it could not refute the Chinese Anti-Doping Agency's verdict that the athletes had inadvertently ingested a banned substance.
As Pound noted, in the competitions in question, there were no American athletes participating.
“»If you look at the context, this was a national intra-Chinese competition, and there was not a single American within a 6,000 mile radius. And now they are trying to classify this as a violation of the Rodchenkov Act, and that is just bad.» , he explained.
The 2028 Summer Olympics are to be held in Los Angeles. Salt Lake City is bidding to host the Winter Olympics in 2034.