| Kieran arrived in a frenetic Paris on Sunday. “It’s a bit of a weird time before an Olympics begins, because there’s this real sense of anticipation,” he says. Many people are leaving the city for the summer, and even more are trying to avoid the impending chaos. Meanwhile, spectators are steadily arriving. “There’s a real excitement and a buzz,” Kieran adds. It couldn’t feel more different from the last Games in Tokyo, where there were no spectators, and fans and athletes were largely isolated due to the pandemic. “That was such an unusual Olympics, and it’s remarkable that only three years later, life is, in many respects, back to normal,” he says. However, he adds that there is a small Covid outbreak in some teams, and several Olympic volunteers have resigned due to concerns over the lack of Covid safety measures. This Olympics, like most others, faces several potential problems: protesters, disgruntled residents, and the biggest problem of all – a doping scandal that threatens the integrity of one of the sports. ‘Fraught times’ Doping scandals are, of course, nothing new, and nor is the anti-doping regime carried out by bodies such as Wada and Usada (US Anti-Doping Agency). Transparency over how those agencies operate is critical to ensure trust. “Typically when an athlete tests positive, they’re provisionally suspended and that’s made public while the anti-doping process runs its course,” Kieran says. That did not happen in the case of the Chinese swimmers in 2021, some of whom went on to win medals in Tokyo. Wada did not declare the results, and the team’s performance was one of the best in Chinese swimming history. Wada says it followed the proper protocols, and that it was limited in what it could do due to pandemic restrictions in China. The explanation given by Wada and China’s own agency, Chinada, did not satisfy athletes, other regulatory bodies or government officials. Soon after the revelations became public, Wada appointed a special prosecutor to investigate how the regulator handled the positive results. Earlier this month, the independent review concluded that the agency’s decision was “indisputably reasonable”. Critics have called into question the independence of the review, while anti-doping groups FairSport and Global Athlete said the process was “inherently flawed from the outset”. They added that, “until all related documents are made public, trust in the system will not be regained and Wada’s position as the global regulator will continue to be challenged”. “These are fraught times,” says Kieran. “There are real concerns from a lot of swimmers about the integrity of the competition”. He also notes that these kinds of tensions are not novel – in 2019 the Australian swimmer Mack Horton protested against China’s Sun Yang at the world swimming titles because of doping allegations. “There’s every possibility that something really kicks off at the pool in Paris.” The politics of it all The International Olympic Committee met on Wednesday and formally awarded Salt Lake City the 2034 Winter Olympics, as was expected. Some IOC members, however, said that it should only be given to the US if their anti-doping agency stopped criticising Wada. “Salt Lake City has now been granted the 2034 Winter Games on the express condition that the US stop criticising the world anti-doping authority, and the local administration seek to have an FBI investigation into the allegations dropped. That’s remarkable,” Kieran says. Fair play Most of the swimmers that Kieran has spoken to, particularly on the Australian team, are troubled by the saga but have a level of resignation about the issue. “They have said, ‘it is what it is’ and ‘we just have to focus on our own race because we can’t control these other things’,” Kieran says. He also highlights the punitive nature of the anti-doping regime for those who get caught in it: “there’s sort of a frustration among athletes that the system is harsh in some cases and then not in others, without explanation”. For instance, the Australian swimmer Shayna Jack – who also argued that something she ingested must have been contaminated – was forced to serve a two-year suspension from the sport despite the arbitrators in her case accepting that she had not intentionally taken performance-enhancing drugs. “For the integrity of the sport as a whole and for public confidence everyone has to feel that these frameworks are being fairly and evenly applied,” Kieran says. Although this story will certainly dominate headlines, Kieran adds that he does not want it to detract from the competition. “There are some stellar matchups and I think this could be a historic Olympic swim meet,” he says. “While we need to scrutinise what’s happening away from the swim-deck, I think the swimming itself is going to be very exciting”.
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