This article originally appeared in The Field’s newsletter, Game Points, on August 7, 2024. Sign up here to get the newsletter directly delivered to your inbox every week.

American tennis player Emma Navarro went on a surprising rant last week at the 2024 Paris Olympics. Navarro was beaten in the third round by China’s Qinwen Zheng on July 30.

In her post-match statements, she asserted that she did not have respect for Zheng as a competitor and that the Chinese player “goes about things in a pretty cut-throat way” that creates a locker room environment that “does not have a lot of camaraderie.”

This is odd. What is professional sport if not cut-throat? Tennis, especially in singles, is an individual experience. Apart from the few pleasantries, rarely does the locker room break away from cliques.

Navarro’s comments, in many ways, can be brushed aside as a bitter reaction by an athlete dealt an early exit. But in the larger picture, it is a microcosm – perhaps even a politer rendition – of a West versus East mudslinging fest that has become apparent in Paris.

For decades, the animosity between the US-dominated West and China-centric East has been dictated by economic competition and contrasting ideological compulsions.

No matter what the romantics of sport claim, off-field differences often spill over onto the field of play. In Paris, the latest battlelines have been drawn across accusations from the western side that the Chinese athletes are doping.

At Roland Garros, Zheng went on to win the gold medal amidst great celebration and praise. But over at the La Defence Arena, where the swimming events took place, the animosity was clear.

French swimming star Leon Marchand appeared to reject a handshake by a Chinese swimming coach after the swimmer won the men’s 200m individual medley last week. On Friday, Pan Zhanle of China broke his own world record in the men’s 100m freestyle race, only for Australian coach Brett Hawke to claim that it was not “humanly impossible” for Pan to have been so fast.

By Sunday, British swimmer, three-time gold medallist Adam Peaty chimed in as well by saying “there’s no point winning if you’re not winning fair”. This was just after Pan led China to a gold medal in the men’s 4x100m medley, in which the British team finished fourth.

The root of these doping accusations stem from a New York Times article in April that claimed that 23 Chinese swimmers had tested positive for a banned substance before the Tokyo Olympics in 2021. The World Anti Doping Agency, or WADA, approved of the Chinese agency’s claim that the doping results came due to food contamination.

WADA, in a statement, made it clear that the contamination theory checked out because repeated tests on the swimmers provided fluctuating results “between negative and positive.”

Innocent until proven guilty, essentially.

Still, the Chinese swimming contingent has been the most tested group at the Paris Olympics, with an AFP report stating that they had been tested an average of 21 times.

It is ironic, however, that while the Americans, French and Australians have been the biggest accusers against China, athletes from their countries have previously been granted the largest number of Therapeutic Use Exemption drugs, or TUE.

Athletes are allowed to use TUEs if the user can prove the drug is required to help with a genuine health problem. A series of Russian hackers, in 2016, published the medical data of several Olympic athletes, including gymnastics great Simone Biles.

The United Kingdom’s Sports Integrity Initiative claimed that 63% of the 1,330 TUEs approved in 2015 came from American, French and Australian athletes. The argument suggested that TUEs may also be providing users a competitive edge.

Shortly after winning gold in the men’s 100m race in Paris, Noah Lyles listed, on X, that he has suffered from “asthma, allergies, dyslexia, ADD, anxiety and depression”. It is uncertain if he too uses TUEs.

Every major sporting event around the world has doping checks conducted – especially the Olympics. Athletes need to start letting the systems WADA has put in place be in charge of catching offenders. By accusing a winner of doping with no proof whatsoever, an ugly side of the Olympians has once again come out.

It is better to be a graceful runner-up than a sore loser.