Whenever a suspicion of doping arises in an Olympics, attention can shift quickly from the athletes who won gold, silver and bronze medals to the ones who missed out.
On Saturday, The New York Times published an investigation into an unreported case in which 23 top Chinese swimmers tested positive for a powerful banned drug in 2021, only months before the Tokyo Olympics. The swimmers — who made up about half of the Chinese swimming team at those Games — were cleared by China’s antidoping authorities and the World Anti-Doping Agency and allowed to compete.
The episode has not only alarmed experts in the antidoping community, but also raised other questions about athletes who tested positive, and what comes next: Which athletes?