Taiwan’s sports world suffered an own-goal this week with the news that two-time Olympic weightlifting gold medalist Hsu Shu-ching (許淑淨) was, as of January last year, banned from international competition for three years after testing positive for a prohibited substance, followed by the news that 10 other athletes have also been banned for various lengths of time.
The report came just days after many Taiwanese were celebrating Hsieh Su-wei’s (謝淑薇) ousting of world No. 1 Naomi Osaka in the third round of the Miami Open tennis tournament, which made it all the more disappointing.
The use of performance-enhancing substances is a worldwide problem, and too many fabled winners have been disgraced by drug-test results.
However, for a small nation with limited opportunities to appear on the world stage, Taiwan cannot afford to ignore the problems highlighted by this week’s events, especially with the Tokyo Olympics just more than a year away.
Given that 6 of the 11 athletes on the banned list released by the Chinese Taipei Olympic Committee are weightlifters or powerlifters, there are valid concerns about the national weightlifting team.
This is especially true given that Hsu tested positive for the same substance that landed Lin Tsu-chi (林子琦) a six-year ban for a repeat offense, which makes her claim that it was in a dietary supplement recommended by her relatives sound rather weak.
Efforts to keep their names secret, supposedly out of respect for their privacy, seems more of a smokescreen.
Sports Administration Director-General Kao Chin-hsung (高俊雄) has said that his agency is mulling whether to establish a separate drug-testing unit, something now handled by the Chinese Taipei Olympic Committee.
That would be a good start, but problems with the national sports industry go beyond substance-abuse issues.
The Sports Administration has been involved in a well-publicized dispute with several sports associations as part of efforts to widen public involvement in those groups and institute much-needed accountability.
For far too long, many of these groups have been run almost as private fiefdoms.
Amid the government’s efforts to force these groups to hold open elections for their boards and supervisors, five former and incumbent association executives in August last year pleaded guilty to illegally gathering and exchanging personal data for such elections in sports ranging from baseball to badminton, tennis and swimming.
Taiwan’s boxing world has long benefited from having Wu Ching-kuo (吳經國) as an International Olympic Committee executive board member and head of the International Boxing Association — until he was forced to resign the latter post amid an investigation into allegations of financial accounting irregularities and unethical conduct.
There have been spats over coaches for individual athletes, stipends, training and the concentration of resources for certain sports, all pointing to the idea that fair play is an ideal not practiced in reality.
The Sports Administration needs to take a long, hard look at the state of play in athletics and do some much-needed spring cleaning.
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