Chinese Officials Form Panel To Study Doping Scandal At Swimming Championships ‘A Heavy Blow To Chinese Sports’

Accusing drug-tainted swimmers of blackening China’s image, top Chinese sports officials have set up a high-level panel to investigate drug scandals at the World Championships in Perth, Australia.

The decision by the Chinese Olympic Committee came after two cases involving five swimmers and a coach embarrassed China’s sports hierarchy.

“The cases during the championships dealt a heavy blow to Chinese sports. I feel heartbroken about this,” Wu Shaozu, committee president and China’s sports minister, was quoted as saying by Xinhua news agency.

Wu and other committee members agreed to form the panel after a two-hour meeting late Thursday. The decision followed a day of promises by sports and government officials to punish the athletes, if investigations proved action was warranted.

The panel will consist of an Olympic committee vice president, the director of the committee’s investigative office, an anti-doping expert, a lawyer and one other official, Xinhua said.

World swimming’s governing body, FINA, suspended four swimmers Wednesday from the championships, after they tested positive for the diuretic Triamterene. The banned drug may mask the use of steroids and other performance-enhancing substances.

Earlier, FINA banned swimmer Yuan Yuan for four years and her coach Zhou Zhewen for 15 years after Australian Customs inspectors found 13 vials of human growth hormone, another banned substance, in her luggage.

“Doping undermines the cause of sports in our country and blackens the nation,” Xinhua reported Chinese Olympic Committee member Yuan Weimin as saying.

China has been fighting allegations that it was building sports success through a clandestine doping program since its women swimmers won 12 of 16 gold medals at the last World Championships in 1994. Later that year, seven Chinese swimmers failed drug tests at the Asian Games.

In all, 27 Chinese swimmers have tested positive for banned drugs during the 1990s, the most from any country.