Chinese, U.S., and Russian Teams for SC Worlds Have Seen Highest Testing Over Last 12 Months

By Braden Keith on SwimSwam

World Aquatics has unveiled testing statistics for athletes participating in the World Short Course Swimming Championships beginning next week in Budapest.

The Aquatics Integrity Unit, the disciplinary and anti-doping arm of World Aquatics, has become significantly-more transparent in publishing testing data since the case of the 23 Chinese swimmers who quietly tested positive before the Tokyo Olympic Games came to light. They published similar testing data before the Paris Olympics, though that data didn’t always match up perfectly with data published by National Anti-Doping Organizations.

• See the full athlete-by-athlete report here.
• Certain testing might not be included in this data, especially if it is not part of the WADA program – notably NCAA testing.

Chinese swimmers lead the way, according to AQUA data, with 9.4 average tests per participating athlete, followed by the United States (8.2) and Neutral Athletes with Russian nationality (7.5).

Digging deeper into the data reveals that the averages are, in some cases, buoyed by a handful of leaders. Qin Haiyang, who was among the 23 who tested positive before Tokyo, was tested 28 times. 17 were conducted by World Aquatics and 15 by other authorities.

China’s Tang Qianting, who wasn’t on the list, was tested the most times of any participating athlete – 36.

For top American, athletes, meanwhile, proportionately-more tests were conducted by non-World Aquatics bodies, including USADA. Regan Smith, for example, was tested 18 times: five of those by World Aquatics and 13 by other bodies. That’s the same ratio for her in terms of out-of-competition versus in-competition testing. Kate Douglass has had 6 World Aquatics and 9 non-World Aquatics tests, while Gretchen Walsh has had 3 World Aquatics tests and 11 non-World Aquatics tests.

333 of the athletes in the report of participants have no reported anti-doping tests over the last year, which likely points more to the completeness of the data than an actual gap in the testing program – that represents about one-third of participants.

While the official press release says that “all neutral athletes have been tested at least four times in the last 12 months,” that doesn’t appear align with the full report – which shows neutral athlete Miranda Grana Perez from Mexico with no tests.

It is true for those neutral athletes from Russia and Belarus, however, and all athletes from those countries have been tested at least once by World Aquatics – though most of them have been tested primarily by other groups. With limited participation in World Aquatics events in the relevant time period, they do have lower counts of in-competition testing than some of the other nations in question.

The testing programme, designed and implemented by the International Testing Agency (ITA), encompasses a wide range of tests conducted both in and out-of-competition. In total, 3,054 anti-doping tests have been conducted on athletes participating in the World Aquatics Swimming Championships (25m) – Budapest 2024 since 1 January 2024, resulting in an average of three tests per athlete.

The AQIU expects 290 in-competition samples to be collected during six days of competition at the World Championships, which run from December 10-15 at the Duna Arena in Budapest.

Testing Averages from the 10 largest Participating Teams

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