By Will Baxley on SwimSwam
After a meeting at the Winter Olympics, World Aquatics and the International Testing Agency (ITA) have announced an expansion of their partnership.
For aquatic athletes, the biggest implication for this expansion is that the ITA will now review decisions made by national anti-doping organizations. This move was recommended by the World Aquatics Anti-Doping Audit Review Committee. The committee first formed in 2024 in response to a doping scandal involving 23 Chinese swimmers.
In April 2024, news broke that these 23 swimmers were cleared to swim at the Tokyo Olympics despite testing positive for banned substances. Chinese officials dismissed the news as fake, and tensions between the U.S. and the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) ensued.
Related: Full 2024 Recap: Chinese Doping ScandalDoping tests for Chinese swimmers ramped up following the scandal and prior to the Paris Olympics. Before the 2025 World Championships in Singapore, Chinese swimmers were the most tested nationality. No tests of Chinese swimmers from these two meets came back positive.
Now, though, World Aquatics has granted the ITA authority to review the decisions of national anti-doping organizations such as China’s.
The ITA is an independent body that partners with sports organizations for PED testing services. It does not create anti-doping rules. Rather, it follows the WADA’s guidelines to manage things such as design the Test Distribution Plan, manage whereabouts, and send Doping Control Officers to collect samples. Outsourcing anti-doping operations from sports organizations to the ITA is seen as giving independence to anti-doping matters and evading the possibility of corruption within the sports organization.
“This enhanced collaboration demonstrates that independent, professional anti-doping programs are essential for protecting athletes and upholding integrity in sport,” said ITA director general Ben Cohen. He and World Aquatics president Husain Al Musallam inked the new partnership in Milan yesterday.
In addition to reviewing national agencies, the ITA also committed to storing more than 400 aquatic athlete samples per year. It will have the capability to re-analyze these samples over a 10-year period. The organization also said it will conduct 3,000 out-of-competition tests before the 2028 Los Angeles Olympics.
It has been a busy couple of days for the ITA. Before meeting with Al Musallam, Cohen finalized an expansion of partnership with the international cycling governing body, ICU.
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