In the middle of 2020, the World Anti-Doping Agency¡¯s investigative unit sent the agency¡¯s top officials a report containing a stark warning based on an interview it had conducted with a doctor who had worked in China¡¯s sports ministry.
The doctor claimed that China had been running a state-backed doping program for decades, a potential nightmare scenario for the Olympic movement, which was still recovering from a Russian doping scandal that had rocked the Games.
And while the doctor¡¯s information was years old ¡ª she had defected in 2017 ¡ª it was specific. Among the ways Chinese athletes were cheating, she said, was by taking undetectable amounts of a little-known prescription heart medication, trimetazidine, or TMZ, which can help increase stamina, endurance and recovery.
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