sometimes whacky products/ training methods/ diets are just smoke screens for more obviously sinister doping/ drugs cheating. Remember the Chinese woman runners who went from 0 to crushing everybody and blamed their diet of turtle blood soup: THE RUMOURS began on Sunday. For three weeks, China's top women runners had slogged through a marathon a day, training at high altitude on the Tibetan plateau, sometimes at midnight. In an area better known for prison labour camps than Olympic glory, the maverick coach Ma Junren abused his charges like a drill sergeant, but every evening he nurtured their exhausted bodies with traditional tonics of turtle's blood and caterpillar fungus. Fearful, however, that Ma was also feeding his stable banned substances, the Chinese sporting authorities dispatched drug testers on four occasions to the Duoba training ground in Qinghai province. One of Ma's stars was reported to be so sick of constant blood and urine tests, after a hard day pounding the track, she threatened to quit. Then on Sunday, four days earlier than planned, Ma abandoned his boot camp and flew the runners back to Peking. In the official silence that followed Ma's departure, one can only guess he was fighting for his sporting and professional life. While the drug testers were hunting for the performance-enhancer EPO, which increases the number of oxygen-carrying red blood cells, high- altitude training has the same effect. Yesterday Ma, controversial and unorthodox, but easily China's most successful athletics coach, lost the fight. With six of his seven-strong team of women middle- distance runners, including the 5,000-metres gold medal hopeful Dong Yanmei, Ma was struck off the official team list. They were not alone. In a pre-emptive strike, to avoid greater embarrassment before the world's cameras, China culled its Olympic team by 27 competitors. Those not going to Sydney are seven rowers, four swimmers, 14 athletes, one sprint canoeist and one slalom canoeist. The remaining 13 are presumed to be coaches and other officials. Three months ago, China announced that 320 of its athletes would fly the flag in Sydney. Ten days ago, it promised to send 311 drug- free athletes. Now, with just over a week until the opening ceremony, the team is now down to 274. At this rate, Peking will be grateful to have anyone left to carry the flag. The state news agency Xinhua said tersely: "Some athletes have injuries and illnesses; some were dropped because of poor form and some produced suspicious blood samples." Their exclusion, it said, was "for the purpose of their health and to protect the principles of fair competition". Chinese Olympic officials gave their Australian counterparts a more straightforward account: that all 27 showed high red blood cell counts - meaning they would fail the blood test introduced to the Olympics for the first time in Sydney. The sudden loss of track and field athletes, swimmers, rowers, and canoeists leaves China with fewer competitors than four years ago in Atlanta, and the team will be hard pressed to achieve Peking's stated goal of retaining fourth place in the medal tables - a feat achieved at both Atlanta and Barcelona in 1992 with 16 golds. Drug testing in China is complicated by the myriad potions and herbal remedies prescribed by traditional Chinese medicine. In a nation of hypochondriacs, demand is high for exotic health tonics containing ingredients such as seal's penis and testes - "guaranteed" to boost vigour - yet even Chinese scientists admit they are unclear of the exact chemical content. With his exotic diet of animal and plant supplements, combined with a brutal training regime, the coach Ma shocked the sports world by taking peasant women and turning them into world-beaters in 1993. But it was China's swimmers who turned the most heads and raised official eyebrows. Photographs from 1994 of the all-conquering female team at the Asian Games in Hiroshima showed a group of women with formidable physiques - but many were chemically induced. Seven failed drug tests, four more failed at the 1998 world championships, and last month the world champion, Wu Yanyan, was banned for four years after testing positive during Olympic trials. Wu protests her innocence but in a recent interview hinted at the patriotic obligation to succeed that encourages cheating. "There is great pressure on Chinese athletes, because there is a quota on competition results. "If they expect you to get a gold and you don't, then you are a `criminal'. That's why when people perform badly they immediately start crying `I apologise to the country, I apologise to the people'." Yesterday's decision to throw drug takers off the team reinforces China's commitment to securing the 2008 Games.Mindful of the bitter disappointment of losing this year's Games to Sydney, the country is more realistic this time, but no less hopeful. Yesterday's move to throw out the drug cheats won widespread applause - from both "friends of China" such as Juan Antonio Samaranch, president of the International Olympic Committee, to sworn enemies such as the foreign swimming coaches who have felt cheated by China's superwomen. Yet the admission of drug taking in the ranks heralds less a new era of openness in Chinese sport than the continuing desire of Communist Party leaders to achieve international respectability. Securing the 2008 Olympics, the world's most prestigious sporting event, is designed to soften Peking's near pariah status in the spheres of athletics and diplomacy - and a major doping scandal in Sydney would reflect poorly on its bid.
