"By December 21 this year, 3020 urine tests have been taken on athletes in China and of these 1698 were of prior or ex-game tests, merely 13 proved positive. With these are also 343 blood tests conducted this year," said Shi Kangcheng, office chief of the China Olympic Anti-Dope Committee recently.
During the Sydney Olympic Games of the year, dope tests had been tested out on as many as 117 Chinese athletes but none of them proved positive, obviously a great success marking China's anti-doping effort.
A fact to be noted is that strict ban has been imposed by China on use of dope, seeing to it that athletes are closely put en masse under the three punitive principles, "Strictly banned, tightly watched out, severely punished". These have as a matter of fact placed China's anti-doping and penalty dealt at a harsher level than those set by the International Olympic Committee (IOC). Typical is a four-year ban and a fine of 8,000 yuan ordered by the China Swimming Association on Wu Yanyan, world record holder of women's 200m individual medley. For failing dope test at a time when the Sydney Olympic Games was to be on in two months' time she was barred from all national and world swimming contests according to the penalty she was given.
Blood tests began to be carried out among athletes as EPO users were found in competitive sports in China since 1998. Chinese Olympians had already been in a reduced number for blood test uncertainties before leaving for the Sydney Olympic Games. Of these, famous Olympians had not even been excepted under the catchword "relying no dope to become an Olympic gold medallist".
Shi Kangcheng said, "China has seen a much reduced positive rate from dope tests in the past ten years. This is as shown by a drop from 1.6 percent in early 90's to 0.5 percent in today's China, at a rate much far less than 1.8 percent of the world average during the same period said.
Thanks to an arduous job done in fighting against using dope in competitive sports at home and abroad, China's anti-dope efforts have won wide praises from various international sports organizations and media. Juan Antonio Samaranch, chairman of the IOC, explicitly expressed his support to China. At his news briefing in Sydney and the IOC Conference, he praised China's anti-dope effort and held it as a model for other countries to emulate. On these occasions, he also told the world what is meant by China's anti-dope effort underlining the true meaning of "fair play" in world sports contests.
(People's Daily 12/28/2000)
