JOIN USChinese Olym-pians were subjected to a state-sponsored doping regime in the 1980s and 1990s, a retired chief medical supervisor revealed to Australian media on Friday.
Xue Yinxian, the former chief doctor for the Chinese gymnastics team in the 1980s, said steroids and human growth hormones were officially treated as part of “scientific training” as the country emerged as a sporting power. “It was rampant in the 1980s,” she told the ‘Sydney Morning Herald’. “One had to accept it.”
Xue said athletes often did not know what they were being injected with and medical staff who refused to participate were marginalised.
The newspaper said it was the first time anyone in the system had publicly contradicted Beijing’s line that a host of embarrassing doping busts in the 1990s was the result of ambitious individual athletes and coaches.