It appeared to be a recipe for trouble. Therefore, one Chinese official came up with a quick solution when his nation’s swimmers were accused of doping earlier this year. He attributed it to tainted noodles.
The cooking wine used to make the noodles was tainted with a prohibited cardiac medicine, which entered an athlete’s system, he claimed, suggesting that it might have been a culinary conspiracy orchestrated by criminals.
After weeks of fighting, this notion was finally included in the thousands of pages of data given to the attorney who looked into the case of 23 Chinese swimmers who had tested positive for the same drug. It was first presented to international anti-doping officials during a meeting.
While sorting through the evidence, the lawyer, who was hired by the World Anti-Doping Agency, refused to take such possibility into account. When outlining his arguments, attorney Eric Cottier took into consideration the theory’s shaky foundation.
No less, no more, the investigator believes that this situation, which he has outlined in the conditional tense, is feasible. Cottier penned.
Cottier found issues with WADA’s and the Chinese’s handling of the matter, even without the contaminated-noodles argument. However, he concluded that WADA had done fairly in not contesting China’s determination that its athletes had been unintentionally poisoned.
Critics of the way the China case was handled can’t help but question if Cottier’s conclusions would have been different if the noodle idea had been explored more thoroughly. The Associated Press learned about this theory from emails and notes taken after the meeting when it was presented.
Rob Koehler, the director general of the advocacy group Global Athlete, stated that the Chinese explanations of the TMZ case are more convoluted than a James Bond film. Furthermore, it’s all pure fiction.
There was something infected in the kitchen.
The German network ARD and the New York Times reported in April that the 23 Chinese swimmers had tested positive for the cardiac drug trimetazidine, or TMZ, which is prohibited.
After concluding that the athletes were tainted, China’s anti-doping agency chose not to discipline them.China was never required to provide a public notice regarding the no-fault findings, as is frequently the case in cases of this nature, and WADA accepted that explanation without pressing the matter further.
Traces of TMZ were discovered in the hotel kitchen where the swimmers were staying, which was the standard explanation for the contamination. Cottier expressed considerable skepticism regarding the viability of that sequence of events in his 58-page report, stating that, despite his ongoing skepticism regarding the veracity of contamination as reported by the Chinese authorities, WADA’s head scientist saw no choice but to accept it.
But Cottier concluded that WADA’s decision to not appeal seemed unquestionably logical given the lack of evidence to warrant pursuing the case and the slim odds of winning an appeal.
However, how did the medications enter the kitchen?
How those traces of TMZ entered the kitchen was still a mystery.
Li Zhiquan, the head of China’s agency, spoke to the Institute of National Anti-Doping Organizations during a meeting on April 30th, shortly after the doping positives were made public.
The main points of Li’s presentation, which have been made repeatedly throughout the story, were that the positive tests were caused by kitchen contamination. Reminiscent of another case in China involving a low-level TMZ positive, he elaborated on one possible method the kitchen could have become contaminated.
He clarified that industrial alcohol had been utilized in the distillation process to create TMZ in a pharmaceutical plant. According to him, the drug-laced industrial alcohol then made its way onto the market through illicit means.
According to Li, the offenders repurposed the alcohol to process and create cooking wine, a crucial seasoning used locally to prepare beef noodles. That athlete ingested the tainted beef noodles, which is why the positive sample had such a low TMZ concentration.
The responsible parties have been held accountable.
Eventually, new data was given to WADA.
The anti-doping leaders who were listening to Li’s report were taken aback by this unexpected knowledge. So much so that, over the course of the following month, a number of emails were sent to ensure that the information regarding the wine and noodles reached the WADA lawyers, who could then forward it to Cottier.
According to the emails obtained by the AP, Li eventually did submit the material to WADA general counsel Ross Wenzel, and, just to be sure, one of the anti-doping leaders also forwarded it.
Along with all of this, Li asked that the story about the noodles be kept private.
It turns out that Cottier included it in his report, but he was skeptical of the material.
He said that in order to receive greater attention, it would have needed to be documented, followed by scientific validation and verification.
AP messages inquiring about the conspiracy involving the noodles and the second athlete Li said had been tainted by them were not answered by Wenzel or representatives of the Chinese anti-doping organization.
Eleven of the swimmers who first tested positive participated in a meet conducted at the Paris Games earlier this year, which was clouded by the Chinese doping issue.
Koehler and others cite instances such as these as one of the numerous reasons why an investigation by a different person than Cottier, who was employed by WADA, is still necessary, even if WADA considers the case closed.
According to Koehler, it appears as though people are making this up as they go along and are hoping the narrative will end. which, obviously, it hasn’t.
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