Clean competition, rather than medal spree, emphasized for Beijing Olympics

Deputy Director Cui Dalin, with the General Administration of Sport, addresses a press conference on the sidelines of the annual session of China's top political advisory body on Wednesday, March 12, 2008. (Photo credit: china.com.cn)Photo Gallery>>China is vowing to go all out to ensure a completely "clean" competition from its athletes at the upcoming Olympic Games and is putting no pressure on them to top the gold medal count.

"We will stick to the 'three-strict' principles, namely strict prohibition, strict testing and strict punishment," Cui Dalin, deputy director of the State General Administration of Sport, said Wednesday.

The administration has tightened dope testing in recent years, he said. Last year, more than 10,000 tests were carried out for doping and severe punishment was imposed on some individual offenders.

For the Beijing Olympics, anti-doping requirements have been issued to all participating athletes and measures have been taken to prevent them from mistakenly using banned drugs, according to Cui.

China is resolute against doping and the Beijing Olympics will feature the largest number of doping tests in the history of the Games, Jiang Xiaoyu, executive vice president of the Beijing Organizing Committee for the Games of the XXIX Olympiad (BOCOG), was quoted as saying in an earlier report.

China's anti-doping work has gained international recognition, Cui said, quoting Dick Pound, former World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) president, as saying the country had set an example for the world to curb doping when he visited last year.

As for the Chinese team, Cui said, "We would rather lose gold medals than dope".

The sports official has every reason to be modest, as in quite a number of areas, China lags behind such Olympic giants as the United States and Russia in the medal count.

The United States won 103 medals at the 2004 Athens Games and Russia 92, well above China's 63.

U.S. athletes won 31 world titles in swimming and track and field events last year, close to all the 32 gold medals China won in Athens.

Basketball star Yao Ming's injury has further dampened Chinese people's hope for a breakthrough in the burgeoning event.

The Shanghai native, who underwent surgery last week to repair a stress fracture in his left foot, wanted very much to play on behalf of his country at the Beijing Games, said Cui. "This is also what his fans across China are looking forward to."

But it was still undecided whether the Houston Rockets center will play in the Olympics.

"The decision lies with Yao and his doctors," said Cui. "We respect our athletes' and doctors' advice and will safeguard the athletes' health."

While Chinese fans are looking forward to Yao's recuperation and return to play at an earlier date, the official said the Chinese men's national team have started a new round of training. "We've told our players to prepare for the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games without Yao Ming," he said.

"It's the responsibility of Chinese athletes and coaches to strive for medals at the Games. But we had never thought of winning the most gold medals," Cui said.

"I simply cannot predict how many gold medals Chinese athletes can win at the Olympics." (Xinhua)