Sun Yang (Doping) – April Edition of Swimming World Magazine
The following Voice for the Sport column appeared in the April issue of Swimming World Magazine. In light of China’s Sun Yang being included on a roster list for an upcoming Chinese Swimming Association training camp, it seemed appropriate to run the column for our online readership.
In the early hours of a September 2018 morning, a hammer – wielded by a security guard – crashed down on the outer casing of a vial containing the blood of Sun Yang, multiple-time Olympic and world champion. Gone were the chances of testing the sample, and present was a reasonable question: Why would someone act in such a way if there was nothing to hide?
Ultimately, we will never know if the doping sample that was provided, then destroyed, proved Sun to be a clean or dirty athlete. What we do know is that during an evening in which IDTM testers were rebuffed in their efforts to test the Chinese freestyle star, actions were taken by Sun’s camp that violated several anti-doping rules, including chain of custody and tampering.
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In February 2020, the Court of Arbitration for Sport swung its own hammer, and dropped the head of that mallet on the career of Sun. In a verdict that was more than two months in the making, the CAS provided a boost for clean sport. It validated the actions of Mack Horton and Duncan Scott. It noted that smugness and failure to comply with doping regulations will not be tolerated.
“It is one thing, having provided a blood sample, to question the accreditation of the testing personnel while keeping the intact samples in the possession of the testing authorities,” the CAS verdict read. “It is quite another thing, after lengthy exchanges and warnings as to the consequences, to act in such a way that results in destroying the sample containers, thereby eliminating any chance of testing the sample at a later stage.”
And so, Sun Yang has been booted from the deck of international competitions, barring a successful – albeit highly unlikely – appeal to the Swiss Federal Tribunal. There will be no defense of his Olympic crown in the 200 freestyle. There will be no concern over boorish behavior in the warmup pool. There will be no stink in the air, an aroma that followed Sun – especially in the eyes of fellow athletes – following his 2014 positive test for a banned stimulant.
The original plan following the events of that late night/early morning conflict between Sun and doping control was for the case to be thrown out. The FINA Doping Panel indicated that proper protocol was not followed and, therefore, invalidated the sample collection. That address by the sport’s international governing body, which was exposed by Craig Lord in the The Sunday Times (UK), did not sit well with the World Anti-Doping Agency, which appealed the case to the CAS. In the end, a three-person CAS panel found protocols were properly followed and it was Sun who was in the wrong and, coupled with his previous suspension, was a two-time violator.
The verdict also justified the actions of Horton and Scott at last summer’s World Championships, when the Aussie and Brit refused to stand on the medals podium next to Sun. Never mind it was Sun who had the tarnished history, FINA sniped at these upstanding athletes for making political statements. How sad.
But now, the sun has set on Sun Yang. He is free to race a pal in a hotel pool, but he will not race where it matters, on an international stage against the best in the world – Horton and Duncan among them. First, WADA stepped to the forefront, unwilling to accept the FINA Doping Panel’s viewpoint on the evening in question. Then the CAS delivered justice, providing a win for all athletes who operate within the rules.
History will remember Sun Yang not for his accomplishments in the pool, but for his dual violations of the anti-doping code. For someone with that kind of baggage, there is only one appropriate comment: Good riddance.
We’ll see how his appeal goes, we all know China will do whatever it can to get him to Tokyo. They will bride or intimidate CAS, WADA, IOC, the whole lot.
The writer here is either dishonest or uninformed. FYI Sun Yang repeatedly tested CLEAN in days before and after incident. He travelled from Jakarta and arrived at night. Test team arrived and he cooperated. He got upset when test assistant was photographing him during blood test and neither nor nurse had test authorization documents. Additionally, the lead test person was someone he had complained in writing about the year before. They did not have FINA papers showing that he should be tested by this team. From there is spiralled and Sun Yang AND the swim captain and doctor and Chinese anti-doping expert said they should not be allowed to leave with blood sample. Test team said they had to take “the equipment” thus the broken bottle. The blood vessel is intact and in fridge and could be still tested. A mistake by Sun Yang? Undoubtedly. But all facts point to him being clean and this resulting from ambiguous and contradictory WADA rules and some personality clash. Sun Yang offered to complete the test if they sent a credentialed assistant. The test team refused. Why?
“Rick”… the writer is well informed and correct… you, on the other hand, spread inconsistencies and inaccuracies that were debunked in the CAS hearing. He did NOT cooperate on urine, did cooperate on blood and was then persuaded by his entourage to take the blood sample back from the chain of command (and we know what happened next, too – including an eight-year suspension for tampering) … The documentation of all officers was deemed by WADA and CAS to have met all requirements. The lead person he had complained about a year before when she was not a lead person also complained about Sun and his aggressive behaviour but you fail to mention that. One doctor, twice suspended, and his boss and that ‘anti-doping expert’ should have been nowhere near an anti-doping control process (huge conflicts of interest where the doctor and anti-doping expert are also a member of the swimmer’s science team!). The intervention of the senior officer at the federation was also inappropriate, not to mention the threat he made to the lead anti-doping officer. The blood sample was useless the moment it left the chain of command – that’s the point of chains of command… perhaps they’ll auction the blood sample in a fridge one day but it will NEVER be tested by anti-doping authorities for very good reason, namely, even if ‘real’ it would be a highly unsafe and unreliable sample. The line about ‘clean before and after’ is particularly silly: that’s the case for everyone who ever tested positive and means nothing at all. The team was properly credentialed: he should have submitted to full testing and registered his objections on the form supplied, just like every other athlete around the world can do and does do day in and day out in their thousands, without issue.