A doping feud almost cost Salt Lake City the Olympics. It still might.

In late June, federal agents working on a complex investigation were secretly positioned at the Buffalo Niagara International Airport, tracking a potentially key witness — a top international swimming official involved in the Olympics.

The official, Brent Nowicki, was returning to Europe after attending the U.S. Olympic swimming trials in Indianapolis.

Before he could board, the agents presented a startled Nowicki with a grand jury subpoena, demanding that he testify in a federal investigation into whether global sports authorities covered up positive tests by elite Chinese swimmers for a banned performance-enhancing drug.

Even before the encounter, the Chinese positive tests had already become an Olympics controversy. But approaching Nowicki, only weeks before the start of the Summer Games in Paris, escalated the situation into a broader confrontation over the power to police global sports, with consequences possibly extending to who is allowed to host an Olympic Games.

Soon after the subpoena was delivered, officials with the International Olympic Committee and the World Anti-Doping Agency began a pressure campaign to shut down the federal investigation. Olympic officials threatened to hold up two things considered shoo-ins — the awarding of the 2034 Winter Games to Salt Lake City and the elevation of the top U.S. Olympics official, Gene Sykes, to the powerful IOC.

This all burst into view in late July, days before the opening ceremony in Paris: In an extraordinary public spectacle, Olympic officials staged a dramatic power play, pressing Sykes and other U.S. officials to help end the federal inquiries as a condition for receiving the bid.

Sykes and the other Americans capitulated. Utah Gov. Spencer Cox pledged to enlist the president of the United States to help the Olympic officials, even though political intervention in federal investigations rarely, if ever, deters prosecutors and FBI agents.

The IOC then awarded the 2034 Games to Salt Lake City. Later that day, Sykes was elected as a member of the IOC.

Sports and law enforcement officials say they have rarely, if ever, seen such a raw exercise of power politics.

An examination by The New York Times — based on documents, transcripts and a range of interviews — provides new insight into the degree to which Olympic and WADA officials employed hardball tactics as they felt threatened by the federal investigation. And it fleshes out the story of how the officials leading the Salt Lake City bid were pressed into a pledge to help counter law enforcement efforts by their own government.

“I’ve never heard of anything like this,” said Michael McCann, the director of the sports law institute at the University of New Hampshire.

The doping controversy first became public in April, when the Times and German broadcaster ARD reported that nearly two dozen of China’s top swimmers had tested positive in 2021 for a powerful banned drug but had been secretly cleared of doping by Chinese authorities and, later, by WADA.

Since then, what began as a sports dispute about fairness and clean competition has become a global showdown, including over the broad legal authority the United States has claimed to pursue doping allegations abroad.

The Justice Department and FBI investigation is examining whether Chinese and global anti-doping officials covered up the positive tests.

In Washington, Congress is threatening future funding of WADA, while the Biden White House is holding up payment of the United States’ 2024 annual dues to the agency, demanding that WADA submit to an outside audit.

An Olympic official recently told a White House official that failure to pay its dues to WADA could affect the ability of the United States to host or participate in the Olympic Games, according to two people familiar with the exchange. The White House is now concerned that the Salt Lake City bid could be rescinded.

In its statement, the IOC said the exchange with the White House official appeared to have been “entirely misconstrued and based on misinformation provided by interested parties,” but declined further comment.

Caught in the middle are organizers of the Salt Lake City bid. Facing political blowback over the deal, they are now portraying the concessions they made — including the potential that the bid could be rescinded if they did not push to end the federal investigation — as little more than window dressing necessary in the moment to close the deal.

For its part, the IOC said the deal was consistent with prior bid agreements and that “cancellation clauses have also been included in the host contracts” for past awards.

And a spokesperson for the U.S. Olympic and Paralympic Organizing Committee said it was “not accurate to suggest” that Sykes, other U.S. Olympic officials or the American committee “would go against their commitment to clean sport in this situation.”

The spokesperson said U.S. Olympic officials were committed to working with WADA and U.S. and other anti-doping agencies “to improve the global anti-doping system and see hosting two Games in the U.S. as a great chance to make real and lasting progress.”

Mounting frustration

A week before the federal agents approached Nowicki in Buffalo, New York, America’s top swimmers gathered in Indianapolis for the Olympic trials. The event was held at Lucas Oil Stadium, an NFL arena, reflecting excitement about U.S. prospects to dominate in the pool in Paris.

But there was also anger at WADA and the IOC over the reports about the Chinese swimmers. WADA had cleared the swimmers after concluding they likely unwittingly ate food contaminated by the banned drug, a scenario that several experts regard as implausible.

The most decorated American female swimmer in history, Katie Ledecky, had been part of a relay team at the 2021 Summer Olympics that had broken a world record but still finished second to Chinese swimmers, including one who has since been revealed to have tested positive just months earlier.

“I think all are disappointed and discouraged and lacking some trust in the systems — in WADA — and how this was handled,” Ledecky said in an interview at the time with The Washington Post. “There are still a lot of questions that haven’t been answered.”

Around the corner from Lucas Oil Stadium, Sykes held a board meeting of the U.S. Olympic Committee at a JW Marriott. Sykes, a longtime mergers and acquisitions banker with Goldman Sachs, served as the head of the host committee for Los Angeles that won the bid to host the 2028 Summer Games.

One of the topics on the agenda in Indianapolis was the doping allegations. There was a consensus on the board that the Chinese swimmers should be suspended from competing at international events, including the upcoming Paris Olympics.

“The recent allegations of doping cast a shadow of uncertainty as we head into the Games in Paris,” Sykes told reporters after the board meeting, “and they challenge the very foundation of what fair competition stands for.”

But that focus would change a few days later, when the federal agents in Buffalo approached Nowicki — an American who serves as the second-ranking official at World Aquatics, which oversees swimming at the Olympics.

Stunned, Nowicki — who investigators saw as a witness, not a suspect — immediately made several calls, including one to Sykes.

Sykes now had a problem.

Pushback

The news about the encounter between Nowicki and the agents ricocheted through Olympic circles on July 4, when World Aquatics released a statement disclosing what occurred. Top WADA officials were furious and released a terse statement that insisted the Chinese swimmers had been unwitting victims of contamination, while also criticizing the U.S. law that federal authorities were using to conduct the investigation.

Known as the Rodchenkov Act, the law passed Congress with broad bipartisan support and was signed into law in the final days of President-elect Donald Trump’s first term. WADA and Olympic officials regard it as American overreach that infringes on their authority to monitor and regulate Olympic sports. In its statement, WADA defended its handling of the positive tests and attacked both the federal investigation and the Times’ reporting on the positive tests.

Five days later, WADA released its own report on the handling of positive Chinese tests that cleared the agency of any wrongdoing and said the decision not to discipline the swimmers was “indisputably reasonable.”

Then came a pressure campaign.

Three days after the WADA report was released, Ingmar De Vos, one of the Olympic world’s more powerful officials, who leads an association of sports federations that participate in the Summer Olympic Games, had his association release a statement.

The statement expressed dismay that Nowicki had been asked to testify, attacked the United States’ “extraterritorial investigation” and pointed out that WADA had just been cleared of wrongdoing by its own investigator.

The United States, the association said, essentially needed to back off — or there would be consequences.

The U.S. investigation posed such a risk, the statement said, that international federations would have to reconsider allowing events to be hosted there.

Top officials at the U.S. Olympic Committee and in Salt Lake City saw the statements and realized the 2034 bid — once considered a certainty — was at risk.

In the days afterward, top IOC officials called their counterparts in the United States to express how deeply bothered they were by the investigation, according to two people told of the calls. Around that time, a top U.S. Olympic official was told that among the demands the IOC was making was that Congress repeal the Rodchenkov Act.

Showdown

Less than a week before the Paris Games were set to begin in late July, Sykes attended a private meeting of the IOC’s board.

He listened to a litany of complaints about the Rodchenkov Act and the investigation. Sykes explained that it was nearly impossible for the United States to repeal the law given its bipartisan support. The Olympic officials should be supportive, he argued, because the U.S. effort was trying to promote clean sport.

For Sykes, the meeting was a rough prelude to what came two days later: the session to decide which city would host the 2034 Winter Olympics. Nearly 200 Utahns had made the trip, expecting to see Salt Lake City win.

At the session, Sykes clearly signaled to the Olympic officials how seriously the Americans took their concerns, adding that they wanted “friends in sport to feel welcome and safe in the United States.”

In the second hour of the session, John Coates, a stern-faced Australian official, directly addressed the U.S. delegation. The Americans, Coates said, needed to follow through on their private pledges to challenge the U.S. government on behalf of the global sporting establishment.

Speaking in a low voice and jabbing his finger, Coates told the Americans that along with binding language in a contract for the bid, whatever they said in that session was being recorded and would be treated as if it were part of the written contract.

Coates then reminded Sykes that there would be another vote later that day on his elevation to join the ranks of the IOC.

He recalled to Sykes and Fraser Bullock, the head of the Salt Lake City bid committee, how they had made “clear and unambiguous statements” that they and the organizations they represent were “committed to partnering with the IOC in the discussions that must — I say that word again — must be had with the various U.S. authorities to ensure that they fully respect the supreme authority of WADA.”

The Olympic officials had no real alternatives to Salt Lake City as a host for the 2034 Games. But fearing that the committee might postpone the vote, Sykes decided that whatever concessions were to be made in the moment were worth it to get the deal done, he later told others.

“Time is the enemy of any deal,” he told them, adding, “Do not wait.”

One by one, the Americans in the Paris session rose to agree to the terms set by the Olympic officials.

“We are committed to fostering WADA’s authority,” Sykes said, adding that he and the other Americans understood “that this is of paramount importance.”

A new amendment had been added to the contract that underscored WADA’s “supreme authority” over anti-doping, including over the Justice Department.

Sykes said: “We certainly accept the obligations and responsibility inherent in the amendment to the Olympic host contract.”

Some Olympic officials then applauded.

Bullock described the amendment as “genius.”

And Cox said that “we will use all the levers of power open to us to resolve these concerns.”

Moments later, members of Utah’s delegation embraced as they celebrated winning the bid.

Adam Pengilly, a former member of the IOC, said it seemed that Coates did not even try to hide how he was pressuring the U.S. officials.

“It was a very unveiled threat,” Pengilly said after viewing the session.

American fury

In Utah, excitement over winning the 2034 Games was tempered by their alarm among some political figures over the deal their representatives had signed.

Top state Republicans were shocked that the delegation, including the governor, had given in to what they saw as the humiliating demands of a foreign organization, one that they believed was trying to protect China, according to a senior Utah Republican involved in the discussions.

An Aug. 3 editorial in The Salt Lake Tribune rebuked those in charge of the bid for making “the wrong choice” when forced to decide whether to stand up “for an Olympics that everyone could trust, or to capitulate to a system that has brought great shame upon the whole Olympic movement.”

As yet, neither Sykes nor the Salt Lake officials appear to have done anything to fulfill the promises they made to win the bid. Privately, Sykes told members of the U.S. Olympic Committee board that the steps they had agreed to in Paris were hollow pledges.

The Biden administration is supposed to pay its annual dues to WADA by the end of the year. Yet despite the pressures on the Salt Lake City bid, the White House says it will not pay until WADA agrees to an independent audit of its operations.

Meanwhile, by the end of the Paris Olympics in August, several of the Chinese swimmers who tested positive in 2021 had again won a slew of medals. A men’s Chinese relay team, which included swimmers who had tested positive, won gold in the 4x100-meter relay, the first time in history that the United States failed to win that event.

Another of the swimmers who tested positive, Zhang Yufei, won six medals in Paris, the most of any athlete at the entire Games.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.