The Portrait of an Olympic Host -- With Olympics a Year Away, Host
Nation Has Work to Do to Improve Its Track Record on Drug Issue

On Anti-Doping, China Faces Host of Questions
With Olympics a Year Away, Host Nation Has Work to Do to Improve Its
Track Record on Drug Issue

By Amy Shipley

Washington Post Staff Writer

Wednesday, August 8, 2007; E01

Soon after Air Canada Flight 031 landed at Beijing Capital International
Airport on a Sunday afternoon last October, World Anti-Doping Agency
Chairman Dick Pound emerged from the jet bridge feeling weary -- he
hadn't slept in the 22 hours since he left Montreal -- but sensing the
significance of his mission: He would later describe this journey as the
most important of his eight-year tenure as the head of the agency that
oversees anti-doping matters in world sport.

Pound hurried to Beijing's Grand Hotel to grab a short nap, realizing
that the upcoming three days of intensive meetings, beginning with
dinner a few hours later with more than 10 Chinese Olympic Committee
officials, would provide a critical opportunity.

With the 2008 Summer Games in Beijing fast approaching -- the Opening
Ceremonies take place one year from today -- Pound sought to communicate
to Chinese officials that suspicion and skepticism connected to China's
record on performance-enhancing drugs, including the unsubstantiated but
widely held belief that top athletes were being sequestered from drug
testers, were of mounting concern to WADA officials and must be strongly
addressed.

"The world is going to assess the success of the Games in Beijing not
just by whether the buses run on time, but whether or not an effective
national anti-doping program is in place in China," Pound said recently,
noting that he plans to return to Beijing for a follow-up visit next
month. "If [the Chinese] were to appear with 1,000 or so athletes nobody
had ever heard of, and all of them win gold medals, that would be a
problem for them, and the Games would not be a success."

During a subsequent interview, Pound added that under such
circumstances, the Olympics would be "a dramatic failure."

Pound's sensitive mission 10 months ago reflected concerns, discussed
privately in international swimming circles and enunciated in recent
years by several U.S. coaches, that the Chinese government cannot be
trusted to put forth a drug-free team at the first Olympics on Chinese
soil. Recent doping scandals in a variety of sports, combined with
China's record on the issue and its reputation as a clearinghouse for
steroids supplied over the Internet, have only added to the
international apprehension.

"It will literally remain a mystery until the [Games] begin," Olympic
historian and author David Wallechinsky said. "We are not going to know
until it happens. I think it's a real challenge for WADA to deal with
this, to deal with a country that is not used to having anybody check on
it on anything. . . . Why would we think they would submit to world
standards in anti-doping?"

To be sure, China is hardly the only country facing scrutiny for its
anti-doping history. The United States endured a humiliating affair
shortly before the 2004 Summer Games in Athens, when what has become
known as the Balco steroid scandal resulted in a rush to cleanse the
U.S. team before the Olympics began. More than a dozen U.S. athletes
received performance-enhancing drug bans. Major scandals also have
shaken Germany and Spain, and the credibility of cycling's Tour de
France has been shredded by doping problems.

"The scandal in China and other countries is the same," said Zhao Jian,
head of the Anti-Doping Commission of the Chinese Olympic Committee,
during a recent telephone interview. "We have learned our lesson. I
think what we should do now is avoid this kind of scandal from happening
again. . . . We should move forward and improve our work."

China's officials and athletes recoil at what many consider to be
hypocritical finger-pointing and the ridiculous proposition that
homegrown, superstar athletes could be hidden from drug testers in the
lead-up to the Games.

"It's a rumor," said Chinese swimmer Wang Haibo, who competed in the
2004 Summer Games, through an interpreter at the swimming world
championships in Melbourne, Australia, in March. "They keeping saying,
people keep thinking, there are more people, more athletes, being
trained for the Olympics. But it's not true."

Chinese officials also bemoan the lack of recognition for what they say
have been monumental strides in domestic anti-doping efforts, including
strengthening the anti-doping organization they created 15 years ago and
adopting WADA's World Anti-Doping Code in 2004, at a time when national
anti-doping legislation also was enacted.

During Pound's visit last October, a Chinese Olympic Committee official
gave a presentation entitled "Education on Anti-Doping of China." The
lengthy document included a six-word summary of the nation's stance on
doping: "Seriously banned, strictly testing, severely punishing."

Pound, however, said areas of concern remain. He said he admonished his
hosts for conducting only slightly more drug tests on their considerable
pool of athletes than Australia, a much smaller nation; urged officials
to work harder to halt Internet sales of steroids and human growth
hormone that originates in China; and reminded them that "they have to
have an independent anti-doping organization, insofar as anything in
China can be independent from the government."

"The world would have to be satisfied," Pound said, "that their doping
control program at the Games is of the highest quality."

During a WADA Executive Committee meeting before his visit, Pound had
complained that China's central government did not appear to have as
much power in its provinces as it -- or WADA -- would like, raising
questions about its ability to enforce anti-doping laws and rules
throughout the nation, according to the meeting minutes. Discussions
about Pound's trip and the anti-doping issues the Chinese would confront
figured prominently in that meeting and another two months later,
according to the minutes.

Pound's visit came at an awkward time for Chinese anti-doping
authorities. Weeks earlier, a surprise raid of an athletics school in
Liaoning turned up dozens of bottles of EPO (erythropoietin),
testosterone and other steroids in a classroom and the headmaster's
refrigerator. Investigators also reported finding 10 children ages 15 to
18 receiving injections of performance-enhancing drugs at the school,
bringing charges of "collective doping" upon administrators there. The
bust, which occurred precisely two years before the start of the
Olympics, was announced by the government several weeks later.

The school was the second in Liaoning since 2002 to face such charges.
Liaoning is home to many Chinese athletic stars, including controversial
distance coach Ma Junren, whose stable of female runners (known as Ma's
Army) got kicked off the Chinese Olympic team before the 2000 Summer
Games in Sydney because of abnormal blood tests, and world 10,000-meter
bronze medalist Sun Yingjie, who tested positive for a steroid in 2005.

Chinese officials contend the school bust provided evidence of the
nation's commitment to eradicating the doping problem that deeply
scarred and embarrassed China in the 1990s. Female Chinese swimmers
raised eyebrows and infuriated rivals by winning gold medals in 12 of 16
events at the 1994 world championships in Rome. In the resulting
international and internal crackdown, about 40 Chinese swimmers were
barred for use or possession of drugs.

"There's still the stigma from the mid-90s," Australian swim coach Alan
Thompson said in March at the world championships. "That's going to take
a long time to fade."

The scandal nearly wiped out the Chinese swimming program -- China won
no medals in the sport in the 2000 Olympics in Sydney and only two in
the 2004 Olympics in Athens -- but it also provided the impetus for
sweeping anti-doping measures.

Zhao said the Chinese anti-doping agency expects to perform about 10,000
tests this year on Chinese athletes (including testing for the
endurance-enhancing EPO), an increase of about 1,000 from last year and
double the number performed in 2004. By comparison, the U.S. Anti-Doping
Agency performed 7,856 domestic tests last year, and the Australian
Anti-Doping Authority, 7,603.

In 1990, when China instituted its drug-testing program, only 165 tests
were conducted.

"Our testing numbers have increased a lot," Zhao said. "China is not a
rich country. We just do our best. The government fully supports our
program."

Three years ago, Zhao said, China also created a computer database of
top athletes in all Olympic sports to ensure that the nation's biggest
stars would be subjected to out-of-competition drug tests, as they are
in the United States and other countries with advanced anti-doping
programs. Out-of-competition tests are believed to be far more effective
at catching cheating athletes than in-competition tests.

"About 2,000 high-level athletes are in this testing pool," Zhao said.
"They have to report their whereabouts. We can follow them every day."

Pound, however, told WADA's Executive Committee he had doubts about the
effectiveness of out-of-competition testing in China, according to
November's meeting summary, noting that it was difficult "to go
somewhere in China and knock on a door to perform a random test. . . .
All that was needed was half an hour or an hour either to disappear or
to manipulate."

Added Pound, according to the minutes, "The message had been delivered
and received, but what China did about it remained to be seen."

"Could a country hide athletes and not make them susceptible to testing
in the lead-up to the Games? Any country could do that," WADA Director
General David Howman said in a recent phone interview. "It's not limited
to China."

And it's not, Howman insisted, easy to do. The World Anti-Doping Code
requires that athletes who intend to participate in the Olympics make
themselves available for testing in the year leading up to the Games.
The code, however, lacks specifics about how this should be
accomplished. Ensuring that Olympic-eligible athletes are available to
drug testers thus falls on the shoulders of each nation's Olympic
committee as well as the various international sports federations, which
must be vigilant to guarantee that nobody falls through the cracks.

If some issues remain hazy, Zhao said, one thing has become clear since
Pound's visit: Chinese Olympic officials have taken concrete steps to
address the problem of Internet steroid sales, communicating Pound's
concerns to the applicable government agencies. "We're paying
attention," Zhao said. "We need to cooperate with other [government]
departments."

There are a number of more broad anti-doping concerns as the Olympics
approach. A test for human growth hormone, a drug that is believed to be
widely abused, is still not applied extensively given the limited
availability of an essential serum associated with the test, several
anti-doping officials said. Howman, however, said the test is expected
to be ready for mass production well in advance of the 2008 Games.
Officials also remain wary of the threat of genetic doping, though most
experts in the field say such sophisticated methods of cheating are
unlikely to be unveiled before the 2012 Summer Games in London. Zhao
said the Chinese hoped to be ready if genetic tests were deemed necessary.

Perhaps more troubling is that the acclaimed CIR test, which is
considered revolutionary because it can differentiate between natural
and artificial testosterone, remains an only occasionally used tool
because it is expensive and difficult to administer. Zhao said the CIR
had not yet been used by Chinese doping officials, who are planning a
record number of drug tests (4,500) before and during next summer's Games.

Pound and WADA officials acknowledge that doping issues remain worrisome
given the breadth of the problem and the depth of the skepticism.

"Even if they walk on water, [the Chinese] are not going to convince a
good portion of the Western media" that the Games are drug-free, Pound
said. "But at least they have got to take some of these steps."