Apr 10 2009
Chinese Swimmers Using Clenbuterol Banned
The Chinese National Swimming Team suffered a big blow when 7 of its swimmers were tested positive for Clenbuterol, a substance banned by the Chinese anti-doping authorities and other sports regulatory bodies such as FINA and WADA. The result was released last Saturday. There were 6 positive results for men division and 1 for women division.
The tests were conducted last year by the Chinese Anti-Doping Agency during a national competition. The agency conducted a total of 1,467 tests for performance enhancing drugs in which the 1,095 tests were done in random, 237 for in-competition tests and 135 for blood tests. 396 tests were conducted on swimmers. FINA and WADA also took 10 in-competition and 89 random tests on 99 Chinese swimmers in 2008 according to the director of the Chinese Swimming Administrative Center, Li Hua. These were disclosed at the Chinese Swimming Anti-doping Conference.
These swimmers will face a lifetime ban based on the anti-doping rules of the Chinese Swimming Association.
In a statement by Li Hua, he said that they are happy about their performance in the Olympics. They have achieved 1 gold, 3 silver and 2 bronze medals in the Beijing Olympics. “We are more sad about the 7 positive tests in the year of 2008. It is a shame for Chinese swimming as most of the swimmers and coaches work very hard to catch up with the world pace. We need to redouble efforts in anti-doping work from now on,” he added.
Liu Zige, the Olympic champion in the women’s 200meters butterfly made an appeal to all chinese swimmers. “I’d like to call on all swimmers to work hard to improve ourselves in the pool and behave cautious on the deck. Let’s get off the drugs.”
Right now, the Chinese National Swimming Championships is being held in China which started from April 5 and will end on April 12. olympic medalists Liu Zige, Jiao Liuyang and Zhang Lin will be competing in their respective events. The competition will serve as the qualifying meet for the quadrennial National Games which will be held in Shandong province in October.
On the other hand, The International Swimming Federation (FINA) also announced a few days ago that they will be imposing 2 year bans to 5 Chinese swimmers. These were Qu Jing, Liu Bingyao, Zuo Ziqiao, Fu Bo and Hu Shaozhi. They were included in the list of positive test for Clenbuterol. This steroid was introduced to training regimen to aid in weight loss.
These swimmers may lose their bid to compete in the 2012 Olympic Games in London. Their coaches also faced two year suspension.
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