Bitter anti-doping feud reignited over US Olympic sprinter ‘who ate oxtail’

An American sprinter who finished fourth in the Olympic 200m final last week is facing a four-year ban — despite being initially cleared to compete at the Games.
Erriyon Knighton tested positive for a banned anabolic agent in March and was provisionally suspended by the US Anti-Doping Agency (Usada), but was then allowed to compete in Paris after an independent arbitrator cleared him of any fault.
Now the Athletics Integrity Unit (AIU), the independent body set up in 2017 to combat doping in the sport, has appealed that “no fault” decision at the Court of Arbitration for Sport. His case will fuel Chinese allegations of double standards.
Travis Tygart, the chief executive of Usada, has been an outspoken critic of the World Anti-Doping Agency (Wada) for its handling of the case of the 23 Chinese swimmers who tested positive for trimetazidine (TMZ) but still competed at the Tokyo Games.
Knighton, one of the sport’s brightest stars with the sixth fastest 200m time in history, claimed that the presence of a metabolite of trenbolone was down to eating oxtail from a Florida restaurant. The Chinese swimmers also blamed food contamination in a hotel kitchen in 2021.
But the similarities between the two cases end there, according to Tygart, who escalated the bitter feud with Wada on Wednesday by saying: “The handling of this case by Usada in accordance with the rules is in stark contrast to how China and Wada handled the 23 TMZ positives and the recently exposed two steroid positives for metandienone [after two Chinese swimmers tested positive in 2022]. In the TMZ cases, Wada allowed China not to notify the athletes of the positive tests; neither China nor Wada enforced the mandatory provisional suspension rules; athletes were not able to have their B samples analyzed; and both Wada and China failed to find the source of the TMZ that they want the world to believe magically appeared in the kitchen.”
In addition Tygart said TMZ is a controlled drug which is “not found in food, the environment, the atmosphere, or hotel kitchens”. He then accused Wada of allowing China to “sweep these cases under the rug” and of “turning a blind eye” to them.
Tygart, best known for his pursuit of disgraced cyclist Lance Armstrong, was not finished with that. He said he assumed that the AIU was appealing for the same reasons that Usada had originally charged Knighton, but said the real issue was Wada’s “bad rule”. Trenbolone was a known livestock-enhancer found in meat supply, he said, and Tygart accused Wada of being too slow to change the rules around contamination. “But the world now knows Wada has secretly changed the rules for certain athletes and countries, as seen in the 23 TMZ and two metandienone Chinese cases,” he added.
Tygart has been at war with Wada since it emerged this year that 23 Chinese swimmers has tested positive for TMZ at a training camp in the build-up to the Tokyo Olympics in 2021. Tygart said Wada had failed to provisionally suspend the swimmers, disqualify results and disclose the positive test results. Wada accepted the explanation that the test results were due to contamination in a hotel kitchen.
When Tygart accused Wada of a cover-up, the body threatened legal action. In April Wada said in a statement: “Mr Tygart should realise that it is not only American athletes who can fall victim to situations of no-fault contamination.” On the eve of the Games in Paris, Wada said it was taking Usada to the Independent Compliance Review Committee in August. That is a significant step because if Usada is judged to be non-compliant with the Wada code then the United States faces forfeiting the right to host the Los Angeles Olympics in 2028.