BEIJING -- The youngest drugged student caught in early August's doping raid
to a Northeast Chinese training camp is as young as 15 years old, said a
spokesman with the Chinese Olympic Committee's anti-doping commission on
Thursday.
In the raid spearheaded by officials from the anti-doping commission and
China's State General Administration of Sport (CSGAS), exactly two years away
from the opening ceremony of the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games, the appalling
evidences of collective doping were found.
When the seven-member team made a surprise visit to a Harbin training camp,
used by the Liaoning Anshan Athletics School to prepare for the 10th Liaoning
Provincial Junior Games, school staff were caught injecting teenage students
with banned substances.
Anti-doping commission spokesman Zhao Jian said the raid was launched on a
tip-off.
Zhao said the anti-doping officials found 25 bottles of EPO, nine bottles of
testosterone and 17 bottles of unidentified drugs at the room where school staff
were injecting drugs to students.
In the refrigerator in school headmaster Shao Huibin's room, 300 potions of
EPO, nine bottles of testosterone and 141 bottles of steroids were found, said
the spokesman.
The raid lasted into August 9 morning and eight out of 10 students caught
using drugs were tested positive for steroids.
Zhao said the youngest doped student was only 15 with the oldest 18.
The Anshan school was the second Chinese sports school charged of "collective
doping".
Liaoning Shenyang Sports School, based in Liaoning's provincial capital
Shenyang and about 80 kilometers away from Liaoning's third largest city Anshan,
was charged with collective doping in August 2002.
Staff at the Anshan school face criminal charges under China's anti-doping
code, which was enacted in February 2004.
"It is the second doping scandal involving a sports school and it is even
more serious because it happened after the promulgation of China's anti-doping
code and it happened as the 2008 Olympics is closing in," said a CSGAS statement
on Wednesday.
"The management of the school not only defied the law but also put the
youths' health at great danger," said the statement.
Liaoning is a sports powerhouse in China, churning out bunches of Olympic and
world champions, and its status in Chinese athletics is unmatchable.
Guru athletics coach Ma Junren, who led Chinese women runners to a sweep of
world records and world titles in the 1990s, is from Liaoning and he had retired
from the position as Liaoning's deputy sports chief.
Liaoning is also home to hero-turned-villain Sun Yingjie, the world half
marathon champion who had been tipped as a medal hopeful for the 2008 Olympic
women's runs before she went down as a doping cheat in 2005.