A bitter pill Inside the anti-doping movement's civil war

Furore over Chinese swimmers has sparked an ugly dispute between organisations that target athletes who use banned substances

- Sean Ingle

Atits glitzy 25th anniversary gala in Lausanne in March, the World Anti-Doping Agency (Wada) screened a slick montage highlighting how it had changed sport for the better. There were images of Muhammad Ali defying Parkinson's to light the Olympic flame and Pelé lifting the World Cup, before a history lesson - and a promise. "Today Wada is a more representative, accountable and transparent organisation," explained its director general, Olivier Niggli, "that truly has athletes at the heart of everything we do."

Not everyone in the room was buying it - one source felt it was too PR-focused, while another raised their eyebrows when Thomas Bach - the president of the International Olympic Committee (IOC) - and the former Wada president Sir Craig Reedie picked up awards. However, frustrations with Wada were largely limited to corridor conversations in the relative calm before the thermonuclear storm.

Everything changed last month when an ARD/New York Times investigation revealed that 23 Chinese swimmers had tested positive for the banned heart drug trimetazidine (TMZ) before the Tokyo Olympics - only to be quietly cleared after the Chinese anti-doping agency found their hotel kitchen had been contaminated. The chief executive of the US anti-doping agency (Usada), Travis Tygart, then turned the finger of blame on Wada and the Chinese anti-doping agency, Chinada, for having "swept those positives under the carpet by failing to fairly and evenly follow the global rules that apply to everyone else in the world".

Tygart has form for speaking his mind-most notably on Russia - and Wada has tended to ignore him or issue an anodyne response. Not this time. It retaliated by accusing him of "outrageous, completely false and defamatory remarks".