What is it with Utah and the Winter Olympics?
Salt Lake City won the 2002 Winter Olympics by paying bribes to International Olympic Committee members, which resulted in a criminal investigation and major reforms to the bidding process. The city was just awarded the 2034 Winter Olympics, but only after agreeing to help the IOC fend off a much-needed FBI investigation of the World Anti-Doping Agency, half of whose budget is funded by the IOC.
The agency, known as WADA, is supposed to assure the competitive integrity of international sporting events. But it isn’t doing its job, and it may have succumbed to Chinese influence.
The FBI investigation began after the New York Times reported that WADA and Chinese authorities had covered up Chinese doping (both deny the allegation). The FBI’s investigative authority arises under the Rodchenkov Anti-Doping Act, which criminalizes international sports doping conspiracies and which the IOC and WADA view as undermining their authority.
Just before the 2021 Summer Games in Tokyo, WADA learned that 23 Chinese swimmers had tested positive for a performance-enhancing drug called trimetazidine that was banned by WADA in international competitions. Violating its own rules, the anti-doping agency failed to publicly disclose the positive tests and simply accepted the far-fetched Chinese explanation that, unknown to their athletes, trimetazidine had gotten into a kitchen in a hotel where they had eaten meals — an explanation that even two of WADA’s own scientists questioned. Some of the Chinese swimmers won medals in Tokyo, and some are competing in Paris.
When the IOC learned of the FBI investigation, it demanded the right to rescind the award of the 2034 Winter Games to Salt Lake City unless the U.S. “fully respected” the “supreme authority of the World Anti-Doping Agency in the fight against doping.” The Salt Lake City organizers caved to the demand.
What the IOC seeks, with Salt Lake City’s help, is immunity for WADA from the American criminal justice system, not just from criminal charges but from even having to cooperate with the FBI’s investigation by testifying or providing information. Utah Gov. Spencer Cox (R) publicly committed to use “all levers of power open to us to resolve the concerns” of the IOC, who will not be satisfied unless the FBI investigation is stopped.
Perhaps Salt Lake City agreed to the IOC’s demand on a “what harm could it do?” basis, since the FBI will ignore any interference by Utah. But whatever the rationale, the ugly truth is that Salt Lake City and Utah, by ignoring Chinese Olympic doping, endorsed the IOC’s demand that the U.S. give up its criminal justice sovereignty over international sports doping conspiracies that violate American law and harm American Olympic athletes.
Those athletes undergo highly intrusive drug testing, only to find themselves competing against Chinese athletes using performance-enhancing drugs. The FBI’s investigation is essential to exposing the scope of Chinese doping, which could conceivably rival the decades-long Russian doping scheme that cost American and other athletes countless Olympic medals.
Consider that a few years ago, Dr. Xue Yinxian, a Chinese whistleblower who worked with national sports teams, fled to Germany and obtained asylum. She described a decades-long Chinese doping scheme that involved as many as 10,000 athletes. Trainers had told her that “the boys started growing breasts. They asked me what to do.” Even WADA found Yinxian credible, but insisted it lacked evidence of a Chinese doping scheme.
It’s an honor for an American city to host an Olympic Games, but not at the price of betraying American athletes and undermining the U.S. criminal justice system.
Gregory J. Wallance was a federal prosecutor in the Carter and Reagan administrations and a member of the ABSCAM prosecution team, which convicted a U.S. senator and six representatives of bribery. He is the author of “Into Siberia: George Kennan’s Epic Journey Through the Brutal, Frozen Heart of Russia.”