Michael Phelps, the most decorated Olympian ever, will come to Capitol Hill next week as a witness for a House subcommittee hearing on doping in international sports.
Phelps, the swimmer who has won 28 Olympic medals, including 23 golds, is one of five witnesses scheduled to meet with the House Energy & Commerce subcommittee next Tuesday in a hearing called “Ways to Improve and Strengthen the International Anti-Doping System.” The subcommittee plans to “examine the current state of the international anti-doping system, challenges it faces, and ways it can be improved,” according to a release.
“The Olympic Games represent the greatest athletes in the world, and we want to preserve the integrity of competition, and ensure clean sport,” said Rep. Tim Murphy (R-Pa.), the subcommittee chair said in a statement. “This will be an important discussion to protect the revered distinction both the Olympics Games and their world class athletes hold.”
Last summer’s Olympics in Rio de Janeiro took place under a dark doping cloud, and recent investigations have found widespread doping in recent Olympics, particularly among Russian athletes. Investigators have re-tested old doping samples, and more than three dozen medals could be stripped from top finishers at the 2008 Beijing Games, the 2012 London Olympics and the 2014 Sochi Games.
The World Anti-Doping Agency last year commissioned Richard McLaren, a Canadian lawyer and sports ethics expert, to lead a wide-reaching investigation into the Russian system. He found that nation’s Ministry of Sport helped cover up positive doping results in more than 30 sports, a scandal that encompassed more than 1,000 Russian athletes.
Phelps will be one of two athletes scheduled to testify before the subcommittee. The other, shot putter Adam Nelson, competed in the Olympics in 2000, ’04 and ’08. He won silver in 2000 but wasn’t awarded the gold from the 2004 Games until nearly a decade had passed and the original winner tested positive for doping and was stripped of the medal.
Also expected to testify next week: Travis Tygart, the CEO of the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency, Dr. Richard Budgett, the International Olympic Committee’s medical and scientific director and Rob Koehler, WADA’s deputy director general.
(c) 2017, The Washington Post ยท Rick Maese
