China's Path to Paris: Star-Studded Swim Team Amid Doping Controversy

China has announced a 31-member swim team for the Paris Games, including six Olympic gold medallists like Zhang Yufei and Wang Shun. This comes amid ongoing scrutiny of a doping case involving Chinese swimmers from the Tokyo Games, which has drawn widespread criticism and affected global trust in anti-doping systems.

China named a 31-member swim team for Paris Games featuring six Olympic gold medallists on Tuesday, while a review continues of a doping case involving the country's swimmers before the Tokyo Games in 2021. China's team for Paris includes Olympic women's 200m butterfly champion Zhang Yufei and men's 200m individual medley winner Wang Shun. It also features men's 100m freestyle world record holder Pan Zhanle and the 100m and 200m breaststroke world champion Qin Haiyang.

In April, the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) said it would send a compliance team to China to assess the country's anti-doping programme after confirming media reports that 23 swimmers had tested positive for a banned substance before Tokyo. China cleared the swimmers of wrongdoing before the 2020 Games, deciding the positive tests were the result of being inadvertently exposed to the banned substance through contamination, and WADA accepted its finding.

The handling of the case sparked criticism from national anti-doping authorities and a number of leading swimmers, who said it had undermined trust in the global anti-doping system. American seven-times Olympic gold medallist Katie Ledecky said faith in the anti-doping system was at "an all-time low" in a TV interview last month.

"It's hard going into Paris knowing that we're going to be racing some of these athletes," she said. WADA vigorously defended its processes before announcing it would launch the independent review.

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