Anti-doping officials in the United States are calling on Minister of Sport Chris Bishop and other politicians on the World Anti-Doping Agency's executive committee to hold the agency to account.
Bishop is Oceania's representative on the World Anti-Doping Agency's (WADA) executive committee at a time when the organisation is engulfed in controversy and is being accused of undermining the global anti-doping movement.
A month ago it was revealed that Chinese swimmers, who had tested positive for a banned substance, were allowed to compete at the Tokyo Olympic Games in 2021 where they won six medals.
China's Anti-Doping Agency reported 23 swimmers had returned positive tests for the drug Trimetazidine (TMZ) at a domestic swim meet earlier that year and that they'd been inadvertantly exposed to the drug which had been detected in their hotel kitchen.
TMZ is a medicine used to treat angina and is banned in sport because it can aid in training, recovery and boost performance.
WADA accepted the explanation saying there wasn't a concrete basis to challenge it, but when the incident became public last month it caused outrage in anti-doping circles.
The United States Anti-Doping Agency's (USADA) chief executive officer Travis Tygart told 1News both China and WADA have failed to follow the rules.
"Even if you believe that that's what's caused these positive tests (inadvertant contamination), you still have to announce the positives, you still have to find a violation and you still have to disqualify the results from the event at which these athletes tested positive at," he said.
USADA believes it's a cover-up.
"Right now China has swept these under the rug and the global regulator who is supposed to be the most fierce watchdog of all, turns out unfortunately to roll over and want to play fetch and is now the weakest link in the system," Tygart said.
"The problem is China swept these under the rug and WADA sat back and allowed China to sweep these under the rug."
Tygart said it's vital Bishop and the other political leaders on WADA's executive committee get to the bottom of what happened.
"That's where they have to get answers as to what actually happened and find out why wasn't the executive committee informed of this decision ... not to require China to follow the rules and not to require WADA to follow the rules that they are also bound by.
"Let's hope he's not bamboozled like past ministers from around the world have been by actions by WADA and the International Olympic Committee and I'm assuming he won't be."
Asked by 1News whether the Government was comfortable with how WADA had handled the Chinese doping case, Bishop said the relevant facts about what exactly what happened in the case are contested.
"There's an independent prosectutor that WADA has appointed who's a Swiss lawyer looking at that to provide the executive committee of WADA with more information and I'm not going to get ahead of the process."
Drug Free Sport NZ was more forthright, saying there are serious questions for both China and WADA to answer.
"On all these, we await further investigation and information, particularly as it relates to the provisional suspension of athletes and the public reporting of violations — two important tenets of anti-doping work.
"New Zealand athletes have the right to expect a strong and transparent anti-doping system that is applied consistently to all athletes, no matter what country they come from."
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