Doping in Sport - Bi-Weekly Press round-up #136
The Chelsea player Mykhailo Mudryk is charged with a doping violation, a young cyclist is suspended and the US government holds a hearing on WADA's management of the Chinese doping scandal.
© Honest Sport 2025: You must seek permission (honestsport@substack.com) if you would like to circulate this newsletter internally in your organisation or add it to any databases, programmes or software. Or please reach out to purchase a group subscription.
Every Monday and Thursday, I send a newsletter to your inbox with the URLs to all the major doping stories in the press over the past seven days. You can find an example post here (link).
A US Senate subcommittee held a hearing on the World Anti-Doping Agency’s (WADA) management of 23 Chinese doping cases prior to the Tokyo Olympics called ‘WADA Shame: Swimming in Denial Over Chinese Doping’. The chairman of the committee is the Republican Ted Cruz, and WADA refused an invitation to the hearing. “WADA’s decision to not enforce these rules may very well have impacted the Olympic swimming competition results for Ms. McLaughlin, one of our witnesses today, who competed against these athletes in Tokyo. This not only harms Team USA but also undermines the integrity of the doping free sport mission that WADA claims to uphold,” (link). You can watch the hearing in full here (link). ESPN (link) and The New York Times reported on the story; “Around the time of the April 2024 New York Times article, the Justice Department and F.B.I. began investigating whether the tests were covered up, and whether antidoping and Chinese officials broke American law” (link).
The CEO of the US Anti-Doping Agency Travis Tygart claimed at the hearing that the 23 Chinese swimmers who tested positive prior to Tokyo were not victims of contamination. “A key part of that case was WADA’s acceptance of the explanation from Chinese authorities that the swimmers had been contaminated by traces of the drug Trimetazidine (TMZ) in a hotel kitchen. USADA scientists analyzed data from a report commissioned by WADA to come up with the amount of food (5 kilos) or liquid (4.9 liters) the athletes would have had to have consumed to test positive at the levels they did,” (link).
The American-based horse trainer Jorge Navarro was released early from prison after being incarcerated for his role in a criminal doping conspiracy. “The Department of Justice stated that Navarro, who trained over 1,200 winners with earnings close to €30million, operated his doping scheme covertly, importing misbranded 'clenbuterol' that he both used and distributed to others, avoiding explicit discussion of PEDs during telephone calls, and working with others to coordinate the administration of PEDs at times that racing officials would not detect such cheating,” (link). You can read more about Navarro’s case on the US Justice Department website (link).