Michael Phelps warns Congress that doping issues threaten the Olympics

Former Olympic swimmer Michael Phelps, who won a record 23 gold medals in his career, warned a House subcommittee Tuesday night that he worries the Olympics might die unless doping issues are addressed with more urgency.

“If we let this slip any farther, the Olympic Games might not even be there,” Phelps told members of the House Committee on Energy and Commerce’s Oversight and Investigations Subcommittee in a rare nighttime hearing to address recent revelations that 23 Chinese swimmers had tested positive for a banned substance before the Tokyo Olympics but did not face punishment.

Phelps and fellow former U.S. swimmer Allison Schmitt, a four-time gold medalist, described careers involving regular drug testing to prove they were clean. Schmitt apologized to the committee for telling in graphic detail how she and other U.S. female swimmers constantly had to pull their “pants down to our knees and shirts up to our breasts and having [drug testers] watch the pee come out.”

“That’s what we signed up for,” she added. “And that’s what we will continue to do to fight for this clean sport.”

Phelps declared he had to be one of the most tested U.S. Olympic athletes ever.

“If everybody else isn’t doing that and I’m subjecting myself to it, it’s just not right,” he said.

The hearing, held at night to accommodate the tight schedules of both swimmers and some committee members, was part of an effort pushed by the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency to withhold some of the $3.7 million the U.S. pays to help fund the World Anti-Doping Agency until WADA releases the information in the report Chinese doping officials provided them in 2021. Several of the committee members said they would support withholding money from WADA, though it is not the responsibility of the committee and doing so would take months.

USADA CEO Travis Tygart, who has been one of WADA’s strongest critics, also testified, asking for Congress to challenge a system in which the International Olympic Committee’s ties to WADA have left the organization “a lap dog instead of a watchdog.”

WADA officials, who have appointed an independent prosecutor to examine the positive tests in China, did not attend the hearing, despite being invited by the committee. WADA officials have said repeatedly they didn’t have enough evidence to challenge the Chinese anti-doping officials’ findings that the 23 positive tests for the drug trimetazidine were accidental ingestions and that they couldn’t investigate in person because of pandemic restrictions at the time in China.

In a statement, WADA President Witold Banka said, “There persists a narrative from some in the U.S. suggesting that WADA somehow acted inappropriately or showed bias towards China, despite there being no evidence to support that theory”

He added that the 23 positive tests “have become a hot political issue” in the United States.

“WADA understands the tense relationship that exists between the governments of China and U.S. and has no mandate to be part of that,” Banka continued in the statement.