Sport - Sports : General

China sets up anti-doping agency to ensure a clean Olympics

BEIJING: China launched its first anti-doping agency and a state-of-the-art laboratory on Monday in the heart of the Olympic site in a bid to ensure a clean Summer Games next year.

China is keen to avoid an embarrassing doping scandal at the Olympics and the agency has the backing of the highest levels of the government, officials said at the opening ceremony.

The China Anti-Doping Agency will act as a testing site during the games and will coordinate a current campaign against illegal factories that make steroids and other performance-enhancing drugs.

“The issue of doping is one of the biggest challenges faced by ... the international Olympic movement,” the center’s director Du Lijun said.

Doping has spread from professional athletes to junior amateur players, he said, and remains a problem in China despite efforts to combat it.

The anti-doping agency will be staffed by 60 people, with more experts coming from abroad next year to take the number to more than 100. It is located next to the central cluster of Olympic venues.

“By the establishment of the China Anti-Doping Agency, better coordination between different sport organizations and departments will be built,” Du said.

Duan Sijie, vice minister of State Sport General Administration of China, said China had made advances in recent years to fight doping.

The positive rate in doping tests for Chinese athletes is much lower than the international figure on average.

Chinese triathlete Wang Hongni, a gold medallist at last year’s Asian Games, was banned for two years for doping, knocking her out of the Olympic Games in Beijing.

Wang was the second high-profile Chinese athlete to be banned for doping since the 2004 Athens Games. Long-distance runner Sun Yingjie tested positive at the Chinese National Games in 2005.

World Anti-Doping Agency head Richard Pound visited China last month and said he was encouraged by the steps China was taking against doping.

The U.S. has also stepped up anti-drug cooperation with China in recent years, opening a Drug Enforcement Administration office in Beijing, and sharing resources as international drug gangs seek to exploit new Asian markets and expand their global distribution chains.

The DEA recently launched a wide-ranging probe dubbed Operation Raw Deal, which was assisted by foreign governments in nine countries, including China, and led to the seizure of 56 laboratories in the United States for manufacturing anabolic steroids and human growth hormone.

China has promised to crack down on the factories that supply the drugs to those laboratories. — AP

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