Anti-doping checks prior to the Games have already reached 90% of the contestants, although athletes such as Chinese or Russian and Belarusians who compete without a flag have received proportionally more checks. The Olympic anti-doping agency has carried out more than 32,600 doping checks this year, with a 45% increase in the previous six months.

This inspection task, which adds to all preparations prior to Paris 2024 with regard to the upgrading of facilities or security measures, has been reflected in 85 cases of possible anti-doping violations and in sanctions or cases still under follow-up.

The controls have focused on high-risk disciplines in which 75% of Olympic participants had been tested at least three times. These include weightlifting - which represents a quarter of the positive cases in the history of the Summer Olympics, as well as triathlon and outdoor swimming, where each athlete has been tested at least once. Gymnastics is still at 99%.

On the track and field - which has historically produced the most failed Olympic tests - the figure is 89%. Only 63% of the footballers have been tested. FIFA is one of the few international bodies that has not entrusted its anti-doping program to the ITA.

China

The statistics reflect a greater number of tests in Chinese athletes, protagonists of unresolved controversies on this subject. In April it was revealed that 23 Chinese swimmers tested positive in the Tokyo preview, but they claimed to have been the victims of food poisoning. 

These explanations were accepted by the global anti-doping authorities, something neither the reference athletes nor the U.S. antidoping agency believe at all. This in turn, has caused a shock with the organisation of the Olympic Games, which this same week warned the United States that its global doping authority will have to be respected at the upcoming Winter Games in Salt Lake City.

What the ITA data says is 98% of Chinese Olympic competitors have been tested several times this year. World Aquatics said on Tuesday that Chinese swimmers competing in Paris have been tested "an average of 21 times each since January 1st", compared to six times for Americans, five for Italians, four for Australians, British and French.

A number that only approaches athletes from Russia and Belarus who do not compete under their flag, within the measures for the war in Ukraine, who force them to give up their symbols, to compete individually as neutral after rejecting the war and in a format for which medals will not count for their nation. Your delegation is the only one in which 100 per cent of its members have been tested.