Drugs in sport: China cleans up image with sweep of doping athletes

CHINA, contesting accusations that it runs a systematic sports-doping programme, yesterday announced that it had caught and punished 24 athletes for drugs offences last year.

Meanwhile, the Australian Olympic Committee president, John Coates, yesterday resigned from the board of the Australian Sports Commission over anti- doping policies which he claims are not tough enough.

"We're insisting that if sports want to be members of the Olympic movement then they must also accept the stricter standards that we are setting," Coates said.

It was at the World Swimming Championships in Australia in January that four Chinese swimmers tested positive for steroid-masking agents. A fifth Chinese swimmer and her coach were banned in Perth for trying to smuggle human-growth hormones into the country.

In an attempt to refute accusations that China was building an East German-style sports machine fuelled by drugs, the official Xinhua news agency said yesterday that 10 athletes had tested positive for banned substances during the national games in Shanghai last October.

Among them was Xiong Qiying, who won the women's long jump gold medal, Xinhua said. A string of world records set during the games raised suspicions that the athletes were drug-enhanced.

Xinhua quoted a statement from the Chinese anti-doping branch of their Olympic Committee saying that 3,540 tests were made last year and 21 were positive. Two athletes were caught cheating in tests and a third was found giving out drugs.