This looked like a recipe for disaster. So when his country’s swimmers were accused of doping earlier this year, a Chinese official cooked up something quick. He blamed it on contaminated noodles.

In fact, he argued, it could be a culinary conspiracy concocted by criminals, whose actions led to the cooking wine used to prepare the noodles being mixed with heart medication banned that found its way into an athlete’s system.

This theory was outlined to international anti-doping officials at a meeting and, after weeks of wrangling, it was finally incorporated into the thousands of pages of data handed over to the lawyer who investigated the case involving 23 Chinese swimmers tested positive for it. same medicine.

The lawyer, appointed by the World Anti-Doping Agency, refused to consider this scenario as he reviewed the evidence. In presenting his reasoning, lawyer Eric Cottier took into account the approximate nature of the theory.

“The Investigator considers this scenario, which he described in the conditional, as possible, no less, no more,” writes Cottier.

Even without the tainted noodle theory, Cottier found problems in the way WADA and the Chinese handled the matter, but ultimately determined that WADA had acted reasonably in not appealing the conclusion of the China that its athletes had been inadvertently contaminated.

Critics of the handling of the Chinese case can’t help but wonder whether a broader exploration of the noodle theory, details of which were uncovered by The Associated Press through notes and emails posted after the meeting in which it was presented, could have paid particular attention to the noodle theory. a different flavor to Cottier’s conclusions.

“There are more twists and turns in the way the Chinese explain the TMZ affair than a James Bond movie,” said Rob Koehler, chief executive of the advocacy group Global Athlete. “And it’s all pure fiction.”

Something in the kitchen was contaminated

In April, reports from the New York Times and German broadcaster ARD revealed that all 23 Chinese swimmers had tested positive for the banned heart drug trimetazidine, also known as TMZ.

China’s anti-doping agency determined that the athletes had been contaminated and therefore did not sanction them. WADA accepted this explanation, did not press the matter further, and China was never obliged to issue a public notice on “no-fault findings”, as is often seen in similar cases.

The common explanation for the contamination was that traces of TMZ were found in the kitchen of a hotel where the swimmers were staying. In his 58-page report, Cottier expressed some suspicions about the feasibility of this chain of events, noting that WADA’s chief scientist “seeed no other solution than to accept it, even if he continued to have doubts about the reality of the contamination as described by the Chinese authorities. »

But without evidence to support pursuing the case, and with the chances of winning an appeal almost zero, Cottier determined that “WADA’s decision not to appeal appears unquestionably reasonable.”

But how did the drugs get into the kitchen?

A mystery remains: how did these traces of TMZ arrive in the kitchen?

Shortly after the positive results were revealed, the Institute of National Anti-Doping Organizations held a meeting on April 30 in which it heard from the head of the Chinese agency, Li Zhiquan.

Li’s presentation was essentially filled with the same talking points that have been delivered throughout the saga: the positive tests were the result of contamination from the kitchen. But he elaborated on one way the kitchen could have been contaminated, pointing to another case in China involving a low level of positive TMZ.

A pharmaceutical factory, he explained, had used industrial alcohol in the distillation process to produce TMZ. Industrial alcohol mixed with drugs “then entered the market through illegal channels,” he explained.

The alcohol “was reused by the perpetrators to process and produce cooking wine, which is an important seasoning used locally to make beef noodles,” Li said. “The contaminated beef noodles were consumed by this athlete , which resulted in an extremely low concentration. of TMZ in the positive sample.

“The criminals involved have been brought to justice.”

New information sent to WADA…possibly

This new information raised eyebrows among anti-doping executives who listened to Li’s report. So much so that over the next month, several emails followed to ensure that details about the noodles and wine reached Li’s lawyers. AMA, who could then transmit them to Cottier.

Eventually, Li passed the information on to WADA general counsel Ross Wenzel and, to be sure, one of the anti-doping leaders passed it on as well, according to emails seen by the AP.

All of this came with Li’s request that the story of the noodles remain confidential.

It turns out that this was included in Cottier’s report, although he took the information with a grain of salt.

“Indeed, giving it more attention would have required it to be documented, then scientifically verified and validated,” he writes.

Neither Wenzel nor Chinese anti-doping agency officials responded to AP messages asking about the noodle plot and the other athlete Li said had been contaminated by them.

Meanwhile, 11 of the swimmers who initially tested positive competed at the Paris Games earlier this year in a competition organized against the backdrop of the Chinese doping affair.

Although the AMA considers the case closed, Koehler and others point out that situations like this are one of many reasons why an investigation by someone other than Cottier, who was hired by WADA, is still necessary.

“It makes it seem like people are making things up as they go along, and hoping the story will go away,” Koehler said. “Which is clearly not the case.”