PARIS.- American Caeleb Dressel, a seven-time Olympic champion, expressed his distrust of the cleanliness of the Olympics’ swimming on Thursday. Olympic Games from Paris following the recently announced positive tests of Chinese swimmers.
Dressel’s doubts add to those raised a day earlier by Katie Ledecky, the other current star of American swimming, and also by the sport’s biggest giant, Michael Phelps.
Swimming has been in turmoil since the New York Times and German broadcaster ARD revealed in April that 23 Chinese swimmers tested positive in 2021 for trimetazidine (TMZ), a heart drug banned seven years earlier.
The athletes, some of whom won medals months later at the Tokyo Games, were not sanctioned by the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA), which accepted Chinese explanations that the results were the result of food contamination during a training camp.
Eleven of these swimmers will compete in the Paris Games starting Saturday.
Asked if he trusts the sport’s authorities to guarantee equality at these Games, American Dressel was categorical.
“Not really. I don’t think they’ve given us enough evidence to support them in the way this case has been handled,” said the Florida athlete, who is tasked with defending his 50m freestyle and 100m butterfly titles.
The other side of the coin
Brent Nowicki, executive director of World Aquatics, said he was saddened to hear Dressel’s position.
“This whole organization works tirelessly. Every day they put their whole hearts into what we do. So when you hear someone like Caeleb say that, obviously that’s not what you want any athlete to say,” he acknowledged.
Nowicki admitted that swimming’s governing body needs to regain the trust of its athletes.
“We have to look ahead, to regain their trust and that of those athletes who share the same opinion, and that is what we are going to work on every day,” he promised.
Source: AFP
