China swimming scandal evidence of importance of clean sport, says Agbeze

The China swimming anti-doping scandal is an example of why it is crucial athletes believe they are competing on a level playing field, according to netball star Ama Agbeze.

A joint investigation by German TV channel ARD and the New York Times revealed that 23 Chinese swimmers tested positive for the banned drug trimetazidine (TMZ) months before the Tokyo Olympics.

They were cleared to compete after the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) accepted that the kitchen in their hotel had been contaminated.

But for Agbeze, part of England’s gold medal-winning team at the 2018 Commonwealth Games and now chair of the athlete commission of UK Anti-Doping (UKAD), athletes competing at the highest level need to know that their rivals are clean.

“It’s really hard. I can see from an athlete perspective, you want to do your best and be clean and you want it to be a level playing field,” she said, speaking during UKAD’s Clean Sport Week.

“You want to do your best and know that on the day, your best was good enough to get whatever position you got. You don’t want there to be any doubts that it was the same for everybody else.

"There has been lots of situations where historically people have been awarded medals that they didn’t receive at the time. That has a massive impact on athletes in terms of funding, sponsorship, your decision to continue in your sport. Even sometimes, the training you are doing and how you change. It has far-reaching implications.

“I see it from UKAD and anti-doping organisations’ position because it’s really tricky because we are working for clean sport and want the landscape everywhere to be the same. It’s a really challenging place to be.

“I think UKAD have approached WADA to call for an independent investigation in that specific circumstance (the Chinese swimming scandal). At the moment we are working behind the scenes with WADA to make sure it’s investigated, to understand that this shouldn’t be happening.

"Our job is to try to keep sport clean and weed out people who aren’t adhering to that. We control the UK landscape, but we rely on other anti-doping organisations in other countries to do the same thing and rely on WADA to ensure everyone is doing the same thing. It’s a difficult space but we want to have confidence and for athletes to have confidence.

“With the Olympic and Paralympic Games coming up, athletes want to go there knowing they have done their best and they are clean and the people they are competing against are also clean.”

Agbeze was speaking as part of Clean Sport Week, UKAD’s national awareness week championing clean sport, education, and anti-doping initiatives with sports across the UK. The theme this year is ‘Journey to the Podium’.

The aim is to demonstrate how much work goes into reaching the top – with British athletes targeting Olympic and Paralympic success in Paris this summer.

Agbeze added: “The experiences I have had as an athlete, it’s quite onerous (anti-doping), not even submitting to testing and whereabouts, but more the everyday stress it can have, it’s a conscious effort.

“There’s that stress of doing something inadvertently, so there’s pressure you have on what you consume but also an element of some of it being out of your control. I think that experience prompted me (to join UKAD).

“We want to help athletes know that from when they start sport, when you are a 10-year-old running around, you might not know about anti-doping then but it should hopefully come onto the radar. ‘Journey to the Podium’ talks about when you start sport to when you get to the Olympics, Paralympics or European Championships, whatever level you get to.

“It’s about understanding that anti-doping is important and part of that journey. You shouldn’t just think about when you are getting a test or if you have failed or have an adverse finding.

"You have to incorporate it, just as you would do weights or strength and conditioning, where you have a plan. Anti-doping has to be something you consider and understand. It’s about forming the relationship with UKAD, clean sport and anti-doping so people aren’t caught unaware.”