MELBOURNE – Australian swimming coach Denis Cotterell has rejected allegations of orchestrated doping in Chinese swimming, saying China is adamant about clean sport.

Cotterell is working with China’s top swimmers in the lead-up to the Paris Olympics and previously coached 1,500m freestyle world-record holder Sun Yang, who is now suspended for a doping offence.

The World Anti-Doping Agency (Wada) confirmed reports on April 20 that 23 Chinese swimmers tested positive for a banned drug before the Tokyo Olympics.

China’s Foreign Ministry on April 22 hit back at the widespread reports, which first emerged in the New York Times and German broadcaster ARD, and cited a review of confidential documents and e-mails.

“The relevant reports are fake news and not factual,” said Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Wang Wenbin.

Wada said it had accepted China’s findings that the results were due to contamination and decided against appealing the matter, triggering criticism from top swimmers and the United States anti-doping authority.

Cotterell told the Sydney Morning Herald he stood by his swimmers “100 per cent” and said any positive test results in Chinese swimming were not part of a state-run programme.

“I am happy to say I’m absolutely in support of my swimmers and dispute any suggestion of anything orchestrated,” Cotterell said.

“The suggestion that it’s systemic is so far from anything I have seen here the whole time. They are so adamant on having clean sport.

“It’s sad to see what this suggests or looks like. It’s unfortunate for everyone. I feel for the athletes here because of how hard they work now to eliminate the tag that was garnered in the 90s.”

Chinese swimming was engulfed in several doping scandals during the 1990s, with multiple athletes failing drug tests before and during major championships.

Leading coaches and swimmers criticised Wada and China’s anti-doping authority over the weekend and questioned why the 23 swimmers’ test results were not made public.

Cotterell said he understood if rival swimmers were upset and that the process could have been better handled.

“It unfortunately allows that doubt to come out and to surface. I can’t prove anything, I just know the truth,” he said.

However, he was also insistent that failed drug tests from contaminated food was a consistent risk in China.

“(Swimmers) are not allowed to eat outside anywhere. When they go on a plane, they can’t eat the food,” he added.

Media reports said the swimmers tested positive for trimetazidine, which is found in heart medication, months before the Tokyo Games started in July 2021.

Cotterell’s former swimmer Sun, a three-time Olympic champion, served a three-month doping ban in 2014 for taking trimetazidine, which he said he took to treat a heart condition. The ban was not made public until after it ended.

Sun, 32, is serving a four-year ban for a separate doping offence which is due to expire in May and ruled him out of China’s ongoing Olympic trials in Shenzhen.

Cotterell said he had turned down an invitation to coach Sun again and that it was “conclusive” the swimmer would not be selected for China’s Olympic team because he was not at the Shenzhen trials.

Meanwhile, former Olympic champion Mack Horton said sport has been compromised and athletes have been let down by a “failed” anti-doping system.

The Australian, who refused to share a world championship podium with Sun in an anti-doping protest, said news of the failed drug tests was “infuriating” for the entire sporting community.

“I feel for the deserving athletes who have missed out on life-changing medal opportunities due to a failed system,” Horton, who won 400m freestyle gold at the 2016 Rio Olympics, said in comments published by the Sydney Morning Herald. “They are victim to a system which has disrespected sport in a bid to manipulate success.”

Cotterell’s former charge Grant Hackett, who won multiple Olympic golds under the coach, also weighed in, hitting out at what he said was a lack of transparency.

“The fact we are sitting here – what, three years later – and it’s only coming out now through the wrong channels, not through official channels, just makes me feel very unsettled,” the staunch anti-doping campaigner told Australian media. REUTERS, AFP