Caeleb Dressel doesn’t expect a fair fight in Paris.
The seven-time gold-medal swimmer told reporters Thursday that he doesn’t trust World Aquatics to have a fair and drug-free swimming competition at the 2024 Olympics.
“No. Not really,” he said when asked if he can trust that the competition will be doping-free.
He has good reason: In 2021, 23 Chinese swimmers tested positive for the banned substance trimetazidine (or TMZ). However, the governing body remained tight-lipped about the tests, and there were no repercussions.
“I don’t really think they’ve given us enough evidence to support them in how those cases were handled,” Dressel said, with the executive director of World Aquatics, Brent Nowicki, sitting next to him.
The tests unveiled to the public in April of this year – as reported by The New York Times – have sparked fierce debates across media platforms leading up to the Paris Games.
The controversy gained much more traction recently, as swimming is slated to start on Saturday – and Team China will send many of the same athletes diving into the pool again.
“When you have someone like Caeleb say that, obviously it’s not what you want any athlete to say,” Nowicki said. “But we have to look forward. We have to regain his trust and regain the athletes’ trust who share that same opinion.”
As reported by Sports Illustrated, the ruling body has conducted a whopping 2,958 tests on nearly 1,300 athletes since Jan. 1.
The outlet juxtaposed these tests to the moments before the Tokyo Games, with a difference of around 1,000 tests. Moreover, the outlet added that there were an estimated 300 more tests than the 2016 Games in Rio de Janeiro.
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World Aquatics stated that an average of 13 tests were conducted on the Chinese Olympic swimming team. For the Americans, the average was six tests, and four for the Australians.
“I want you to ask that same question of Caeleb in L.A. [in 2028] and my goal and my hope is that his mind changes,” Nowicki said. “In four years he says, ‘You know what? They did what they said they were going to do.’”