Following rumours and accusations of widespread doping among Chinese swimmers at this year's Olympic Games, World Aquatics appears to be making good on its promise to test these athletes more frequently ahead of next week's competitions in Paris.

Pressure for more clarity on these tests has been constant since mid-July, when the Asian country selected 11 swimmers suspected of doping to participate in the upcoming Olympics, a decision that made matters worse and led to a US congressional hearing in which swimming icons such as Michael Phelps denounced the world policing body and politicians demanded answers from the World Aquatics agency that is supposed to oversee the cheats.

More specifically, the uproar erupted when the New York Times reported that Wang Shun, Yang Junxuan and Qin Haiyang tested positive for another banned substance in 2016 and 2017, but their clenbuterol levels were between six and 50 times below the minimum reporting level. 

Wang, Yang and Qin also tested positive on TMZ in January 2021 along with Zhang Yufei, some seven months before the Summer Games in Tokyo. Wang, Yang and Zhang won Olympic gold medals in Tokyo, while Qin broke the world record in the 200 breaststroke last year.

Looking back, alarm bells also went off in 2021 when eleven Chinese Olympic swimmers in Paris were implicated in a doping controversy involving 23 Chinese swimmers who tested positive for the banned substance trimetazidine (TMZ). They were never punished after the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) refused to refute China's claim that they unknowingly ingested the heart medication due to contamination in their hotel kitchen.

Now, less than a week before the Games begin, the agency has explained that during the Chinese Olympic swimming team's first 10 days in Paris, its 31-athlete squad has already been tested nearly 200 times in total, according to a later-deleted Weibo social media post by team nutritionist Yu Liang. 

If those figures are indeed accurate, that equates to about six tests per swimmer. "We arrived for the trials at six in the morning and during the lunch break we had nowhere to rest except a sofa in the hotel lobby". Yu wrote, "We arrived again at nine in the evening and had to stay up until the middle of the night".

World Aquatics said last week that Chinese Olympic swimmers will be tested by the International Testing Agency ‘no fewer than eight times’ from 1 January until the start of the Paris Olympics. Both World Aquatics and a Swiss prosecutor reviewed the 2021 Chinese doping controversy and determined earlier this month that WADA handled the case in accordance with protocol. 

However, the US federal investigation into the scandal is ongoing and criticism has continued with Michael Phelps and Allison Schmitt testifying at a recent congressional hearing. In May, seven-time Olympic champion Katie Ledecky said her faith in the anti-doping system "is at an all-time low". When reports first emerged in April about China's 2021 doping controversy, China denied any wrongdoing and called the doping allegations "fake news".