July 03, 2008	Thursday	Jamadi-us-Sani 28, 1429

BEIJING, July 2: Eight Chinese athletes have been banned after being testing positive for performance-enhancing drugs during a crackdown ahead of the Beijing Olympics, state press reported on Wednesday.

Two of the athletes were with China’s national team, including wrestler Luo Meng and men’s swimmer Ouyang Kunpeng, whose lifetime ban was announced last week, the Titan Sports Weekly said.

Two coaches were also barred for life, including Ouyang’s coach Feng Shangbao and Luo’s trainer, who was not named, the paper said.

Six other athletes at the provincial level — two divers, two track and field athletes, a weightlifter and a swimmer — have also tested positive for prohibited substances, it said.

The positive results turned up amid 5,000 drug tests administered by China since January, the paper said.

The six provincial athletes were banned from taking part in China’s National Games next year, it said.

Luo tested positive for using a banned diuretic. Diuretics are weight-loss substances which are sometimes used to mask performance-enhancing drugs.

Ouyang tested positive for clenbuterol, an anabolic steroid.

“Finding drug cheats is not an embarrassment to us. On the contrary, it says what a firm stance we take in the fight against doping,” Yuan Hong, head of China’s Olympic Committee Anti-Doping Commission, said.

“Ouyang’s ban proves nothing but our determination to weed out dope cheats among Chinese athletes. No matter how excellent an athlete is, he or she will be severely punished once tested positive.” Only two of the other drug cheats were named, Zhang Jun and Gao Lin, both of the Hebei provincial diving team.

State media said the crackdown showed China’s determination to host a clean Beijing Olympics and rid its national team of drug cheats.

China’s sports administration was widely accused of institutionalised doping and officially condoning cheating after a string of positive doping tests in the 1990s, mainly among the country’s then world-beating swimmers.

Chinese track coach Ma Junren’s famed stable of distance runners also came under a cloud of drug suspicions after bursting onto the world scene with a series of titles at the 1993 World Championships.—AFP