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Lilly King ‘Not Confident’ in Clean Olympic Field after China Doping Revelation
Lilly King, long an outspoken critic of the use of performance enhancing drugs in sports, told the New York Times on Sunday that she is “not confident” in the sports’ anti-doping process.
King spoke to the Times, which was one of the outlets that broke news last month that the World Anti-Doping Agency had cleared 23 Chinese swimmers of doping positives in early 2021. WADA assented to the finding of the Chinese Anti-Doping Agency that the positives were due to environmental contamination of trimetazidine in a hotel kitchen, allowing them to compete at the Tokyo Olympics later that year.
“I am not confident when I get up on the blocks that the people to my right and my left are clean,” King told the Times. “And that’s really unfortunate, because that’s not something I should have to focus on while racing at the Olympics.”
King has been a long-time critic of failures in the anti-doping apparatus. One of her longtime rivals was Russian swimmer Yulia Efimova, who swam at the 2016 Olympics despite a failed drug test. She has registered criticism of FINA’s handling of the Sun Yang case, and she and Katie Ledecky were among the American swimmers who stepped up to participate in and vouch for the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency’s new program of remote testing during the COVID-19 pandemic, wary that it might present an opportunity for bad actors. (Lockdown-related restrictions were specifically cited by WADA and CHINADA in deviating from established procedures in the Chinese case.)
King’s response fits with how the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency has assailed WADA for its handling of the Chinese case.
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