The head of the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency told senators that Chinese swimmers would have had to eat around 11 pounds 5 kilograms of food to test for the amounts of the performance enhancer that resulted in the much-debated positive drug tests from 2021 that were later disregarded.
"It's unbelievable to think that Tinkerbell just showed up and sprinkled it all over the kitchen," Travis Tygart said in a Senate hearing Tuesday focused on the World Anti-Doping Agency's response to the doping case.
A key part of that case was WADA's acceptance of the explanation from Chinese authorities that the swimmers had been contaminated by traces of the drug Trimetazidine TMZ in a hotel kitchen.
USADA scientists analyzed data from a report commissioned by WADA to come up with the amount of food 5 kilos or liquid 4.9 liters the athletes would have had to have consumed to test positive at the levels they did.
WADA officials declined to participate in the hearing, which spokesperson James Fitzgerald called "another political effort led by Travis Tygart ... to leverage the Senate and the media in a desperate effort to relitigate the Chinese swimming cases and misinform athletes and other stakeholders."