Drugs in Sport: Anti-doping officials unearthed 450 doses of EPO, testosterone and steroids during a raid on a Liaoning athletics school's training camp earlier this month, according to state media.
China is cracking down on the use of banned substances to avoid any embarrassment when it hosts the 2008 Olympics and state sports officials have been unusually quick to reveal details of the August 8th raid.
A spokesman for the Chinese Olympic committee's anti-doping commission said the raid uncovered doping of athletes as young as 15 at the Anshan Athletics School training camp in Harbin.
Zhao Jian said anti-doping officials had found 25 bottles of erythropoietin (EPO), nine bottles of testosterone and 17 bottles of steroids in a room where school staff were caught injecting 10 students with drugs. A further 275 doses of EPO and 124 doses of steroids were found in a refrigerator in headmaster Shao Huibin's room.
Liaoning is known for producing world-class athletes but has previously been embroiled in doping scandals. Controversial athletics coach Ma Junren, who was based in Liaoning, produced a crop of world-class distance runners known as "Ma's Army" in the 1990s.
Ma always maintained his athletes broke world records and won world titles with the help of nothing more than turtle blood, caterpillar fungus and a gruelling training schedule.
Just before the 2000 Olympics in Sydney, however, Ma and six of his runners were dropped from the team when blood tests revealed abnormal results.
American sprinter LaTasha Jenkins has failed a drugs test, the Chicago Tribune said on its website on Thursday. Her "A" sample from an in-competition test in late July was found to contain traces of the anabolic steroid nandrolone, the newspaper said, quoting unnamed sources.
Jenkins, the 2001 world indoor 200 metres silver medallist, could not be reached for comment but her coach Trevor Graham denied the report.
Olympic sprint champion Justin Gatlin said yesterday he expected to be cleared of doping charges brought against him by the US Anti-Doping Agency. The American also said he expected to compete again.
The comments were Gatlin's first since USADA announced on Tuesday it had banned him for up to a maximum of eight years pending an arbitration hearing.
