'We took drugs': Chinese athletes confess to doping in secret letter
Claims of state-sponsored doping of Chinese track athletes are being investigated by the sport's global governing body after a letter attributed to a squad of ten runners including world record holder Wang Junxia surfaced in the Chinese media.
Wang, who set world records in the 3000 metres and 10,000 metres in 1993 said she and her teammates were forced to take "large doses of illegal drugs over the years". In the letter reportedly penned in 1995 she wrote that women on the team tried to secretly throw away the pills forced on them. But coach Ma Junren would personally inject drugs into his athletes, known as "Ma's Army."
Chinese atheletes' letter confess doping
The IAAF investigate a 20-year-old letter signed by Chinese track atheletes, alleging coach Ma Junren forced them to take 'large doses of illegal drugs' during the 1990s.
The International Association of Athletics Federations has asked the Chinese Athletics Association for help to verify the letter, the South China Morning Post reported. If the letter is verified as an admission of guilt by the athletes, they could be stripped of their titles and banned from the sport as well as face financial sanctions.
Wang gained a place in the IAAF's Hall of Fame for her notable achievements in the 1993 championships in Tianjin, Stuttgart and Beijing. She took nearly 42 seconds off the 10,000 metre race record in Beijing.
In one month that changed the history of their sport, the Chinese women distance runners won three world titles and four world records. Until then no female Chinese track athlete had won a world record. Two-time US Olympian Patti-Sue Plumer told the Chicago Tribune: "They destroyed any chance of any female human breaking those records in the next 100 years".
Authoritarian Ma's intense training regime on the high Tibetan plateau, his strict bans on long hair and dating, the women's perceived capacity for "eating bitterness" and his use of exotic elixirs of caterpillar fungus and powdered seahorse were credited with the success.
But within months the team mutinied against the chain-smoking supercoach, accusing him of pocketing the cash prizes and keeping the three Mercedes cars they had won for himself. Their stunning performances of 1993 were not repeated, and multiple doping positives among Chinese competitors at the 1994 Asian Games cast doubts over China's entire elite sports program.
Both Wang Junxia and Ma Jinren have denied doping in the past.
A retired team doctor Yue Xinxian told Fairfax Media in 2012 the use of steroids and growth hormones was "rampant" as part of a "scientific training" regimen in the 1980s and into the 1990s when China emerged as a sporting power. She said athletes often did not know what they were being injected with and medical staff who refused to participate were marginalised.
The letter under investigation and co-signed by nine of Wang Junxia's teammates was sent to a journalist named Zhao Yu but remained secret for more than two decades until published on leading Chinese online sports portal sports.qq.com. Other signatories to the letter are Ma Ningning, Wang Yuan, Lu Ou, Wang Xiaoxia, Zhang Linli, Liu Li, Lu Yi, Liu Dong and Zhang Lirong.
In November a commission set up by the independent World Anti-Doping Agency to look into claims of rampant cheating among Russian athletes foundwidespread doping and evidence of a "multifaceted and complex conspiracy" involving the IAAF, including multiple breaches of rules and processes by IAAF officials.
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