(Sports Focus) China chooses clean sport over gold medal

It is a tough job to reject the temptation of gold medal but China has managed to do it and put anti-doping efforts first.

An anti-doping official told Xinhua that he was pleased to know that no Chinese athletes are mentioned in the current allegations over widespread doping in athletics, at least for now.

"We are not able to get hold of a copy of the detailed report but from what I know, there are no Chinese athletes mentioned by now," said the official on Thursday who asked not to be named.

Britain's Sunday Times and Germany's ARD/WDR broadcaster said at the beginning of the month they had obtained the results of 12,000 blood tests from 5,000 athletes from athletics' world governing body IAAF.

ARD and The Sunday Times asked Australian scientists Robin Parisotto and Michael Ashenden to review the data.

They reported that 800 athletes, competing in disciplines ranging from the 800 meters to marathon, registered blood values which are considered suspicious while WADA stressed "none of the test results contained in the database could be used as the basis for a definitive finding that doping had occurred."

"For what it's worth, this can prove to some extent that our efforts paid off," said the official who has worked in the field for more than a decade.

"From the government level, zero tolerance to doping is not just a slogan," the official said.

The official recalled the time ahead of the Sydney Olympics in 2000 when China cut legendary coach Ma Junren and six of his runners out of the Chinese Olympic team due to "suspicious results of blood tests".

"I remember clearly how much pressure there was to make this decision when Ma's team are practically equivalents to gold medals," the official said.

China kept up its anti-doping efforts and now owns one of the top anti-doping labs in the world and conducts more than 10,000 doping tests each year.

When World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) president Craig Reedie visited Beijing lab on Wednesday, he called China Anti-Doping Agency (CHINADA) "one of the best".

"I had very interesting meetings with CHINADA, one of the best anti-doping organization in the world," said Reedie.

"We cooperate with CHINADA almost on a daily basis and this goes all the time," he said. "Both WADA and CHINADA are interested in clean sport and protecting the athletes, so we work together, as I said, almost everyday to achieve that."

As the Beijing athletics world championships is about to open that Reedie "can't wait" to watch, CHINADA has started doping tests since Monday. Some of the athletes already received "visits" from Chinese doping control officials in their hotels. All samples will be analyzed in Beijing lab.

What impressed Reedie most is the outreach program CHINADA set up in the three hotels where athletes stay.

"They are running their outreach program in the hotels which is designed to educate the young track and field athletes that clean sport is important and we should protect clean athletes," he said.

"Normally in major events there is one village, so you can concentrate your outreach program in one place now there are three outreach programs. I am very grateful for what they are doing," he added.

Outreach program is one of CHINADA's focus in their anti-doping drive as they has trained a group of lecturers who travel around the country to give anti-doping lectures to sports teams and school students.

There is also the coordinated efforts of multiple governmental departments to crack down on doping in a larger scope, which worked well for the 2008 Beijing Olympics and are still in place.

Reedie said he was happy to see that Chinese government is considering taking its anti-doping efforts up a notch.

"This is a long term project. we are negotiating at the moment on a memorandum of understanding with the government here in Beijing," he said. "This is a complicated exercise but I am very pleased that the Chinese government is prepared to consider this type of assistance." Endit