SYDNEY, Australia — Amid the backdrop of its aggressive campaign to win the 2008 Olympic Games for Beijing, China abruptly withdrew 27 athletes and 13 coaches from its Olympic team Wednesday, saying a stepped-up anti-doping program had turned up "suspicious" results in "several" athletes.
The Chinese Olympic Committee pulled out 14 track and field athletes, four swimmers, seven rowers and two kayakers. The 13 officials include one of the world's most controversial track coaches, Ma Junren, who has long claimed that his runners won races because they trained at altitude and ate a diet spiced with turtle blood and caterpillar fungus.
International Olympic Committee officials hailed the Chinese move as proof that a new get-tough anti-doping stance is serving as a deterrent to drug use. The policies include thousands of random pre-Games drug tests as well as hundreds of tests--to be instituted for the first time at the Sydney Games--for the performance-enhancing substance EPO, which is believed to be in wide use by world-class athletes.
Knowing of the IOC's stance, the Chinese performed their own tests beforehand.
"People are now convinced there is a test, that the IOC is prepared to apply it and nobody wants to send athletes to the Games that are going to get caught and disgraced," said IOC Vice President Dick Pound of Canada, who is also chairman of the recently created World Anti-Doping Agency.
He Zhenliang, China's member of the ruling IOC Executive Board, did not respond Wednesday night to reporters' questions as he was being hustled through the lobby of the downtown hotel where the IOC is based for the duration of the Games. They begin Sept. 15 and end Oct. 1.
Asked whether the Chinese pull-out is related to the 2008 bid, Francois Carrard, the IOC's director general, said, "You should ask them."
Behind the scenes, it was plain that with the 2008 bid at stake, the Chinese did not want to run the public-relations disaster of having their athletes win gold--only to be stripped upon a positive drug test.
The financial stakes could be immense. The Games would surely open the enormous Chinese market, long hidden from capitalist view, to the world's biggest multinational corporations--among them the IOC's leading sponsors.
Seven years ago, Beijing lost out on the 2000 Games to Sydney, by a mere two votes. Already, 2008 Games signs have been hung at the Beijing airport and 2008 Games commemorative stamps have been issues; cabbies and hotel employees in Beijing are being urged to learn English.
