Eight Chinese athletes have been banned after testing positive for performance-enhancing drugs during a crackdown ahead of the Beijing Olympics, state press reported yesterday.
Two of the athletes were with China’s national team, including wrestler Luo Meng and men’s swimmer Ouyang Kunpeng, whose lifetime ban was announced last week, the Titan Sports Weekly said.
Two coaches were also barred for life, including Ouyang’s coach Feng Shangbao and Luo’s trainer, who was not named, the paper said.
PHOTO: AP
Six other athletes at the provincial level — two divers, two track and field athletes, a weightlifter and a swimmer — have also tested positive for prohibited substances, it said.
The positive results turned up amid 5,000 drug tests administered by China since January, the paper said.
The six provincial athletes were banned from taking part in China’s National Games next year, it said.
Luo tested positive for using a banned diuretic. Diuretics are weight-loss substances which are sometimes used to mask performance-enhancing drugs.
Ouyang tested positive for clenbuterol, an anabolic steroid.
“Finding drug cheats is not an embarrassment to us. On the contrary, it says what a firm stance we take in the fight against doping,” Xinhua news agency quoted Yuan Hong, the head of China’s Olympic Committee Anti-Doping Commission, as saying.
“Ouyang’s ban proves nothing but our determination to weed out dope cheats among Chinese athletes. No matter how excellent an athlete is, he or she will be severely punished once tested positive,” Yuan said.
Only two of the other drug cheats were named, Zhang Jun and Gao Lin, both of the Hebei provincial diving team.
State media said the crackdown showed China’s determination to host a clean Beijing Olympics and rid its national team of drug cheats.
China’s sports administration was widely accused of institutionalized doping and officially condoning cheating after a string of positive doping tests in the 1990s, mainly among the country’s then world-beating swimmers.
Chinese track coach Ma Junren’s famed stable of distance runners also came under a cloud of drug suspicions after bursting onto the world scene with a series of titles at the 1993 World Championships.
Since being awarded to host August’s Beijing Olympics, China has worked to rid itself of the lingering taint of drugs.
Tainan TSG Hawks slugger Steven Moya, who is leading the CPBL in home runs, has withdrawn from this weekend’s All-Star Game after the unexpected death of his wife. Moya’s wife began feeling severely unwell aboard a plane that landed at Taiwan Taoyuan International Airport on Friday evening. She was rushed to a hospital, but passed away, the Hawks said in a statement yesterday. The franchise is assisting Moya with funeral arrangements and hopes fans who were looking forward to seeing him at the All-Star Game can understand his decision to withdraw. According to Landseed Medical Clinic, whose staff attempted to save Moya’s wife,
Wallabies coach Joe Schmidt yesterday backed Nick Champion de Crespigny to be the team’s “roving scavenger” after handing him a shock debut in the opening Test against the British and Irish Lions Test in Brisbane. Hard man Champion de Crespigny, who spent three seasons at French side Castres before moving to the Western Force this year, is to get his chance tomorrow with first-choice blindside flanker Rob Valetini not fully fit. His elevation is an eye-opener, preferred to Tom Hooper, but Schmidt said he had no doubt about his abilities. “I keep an eye on the Top 14 having coached there many years
ON A KNEE: In the MLB’s equivalent of soccer’s penalty-kicks shoot-out, the game was decided by three batters from each side taking three swings each off coaches Kyle Schwarber was nervous. He had played in Game 7 of the MLB World Series and homered for the US in the World Baseball Classic (WBC), but he had never walked up to the plate in an All-Star Game swing-off. No one had. “That’s kind of like the baseball version of a shoot-out,” Schwarber said after homering on all three of his swings, going down to his left knee on the final one, to overcome a two-homer deficit. That held up when Jonathan Aranda fell short on the American League’s final three swings, giving the National League a 4-3 swing-off win after
Seattle’s Cal Raleigh defeated Tampa Bay’s Junior Caminero 18-15 in Monday’s final to become the first catcher to win the Major League Baseball Home Run Derby. The 28-year-old switch-hitter, who leads MLB with 38 homers this season, won US$1 million by capturing the special event for sluggers at Atlanta’s Truist Park ahead of yesterday’s MLB All-Star Game. “It means the world,” Raleigh said. “I could have hit zero home runs and had just as much fun. I just can’t believe I won. It’s unbelievable.” Raleigh, who advanced from the first round by less than 25mm on a longest homer tiebreaker, had his father
RSS