With a big fish, Chinese women’s hammer throw gold medallist Zhang Wenxiu, falling into the net here, sport’s anti-doping campaigners may be rejoicing, but the 17th Asian Games could turn out to be a big disappointment for them.
The results of nearly 70 per cent of the 1800 samples, from around 1600 athletes, have come in and just six athletes, including only one in athletics, came in positive.
That should be big shock to many but not to Dr. M. Jegathesan, the Chairman of the Olympic Council of Asia’s Medical Committee.
“May be, the athletes are getting aware of things, they are being careful, they are taking the right steps,” Jegathesan, a former Asian sprint star who ran in three Olympics, told The Hindu here on Saturday.
“And the federations and national Olympic committees are also being careful, because don’t forget, athletics was always hot news and people take more attention of athletics. It is good news, I’m not surprised.”
With a lot of research going into sports science and big money being poured into the making of champions, are athletes now getting super stuff that evades testers?
“Those possibilities are always there but we cannot say without any proof. We don’t know, we really don’t know. You can speculate but we don’t know,” said Jegathesan, popularly known as the Flying Doctor for his exploits on the track even after gaining his medical degree.
After the massive doping scandal in Chinese athletics in 1994, rarely has a top-level Chinese athlete failed a dope test at a major Games. And with Zhang Wenxiu, a multiple World Championship medallist, failing a dope test at Incheon, will they be watching the Chinese athletes closely over the next few years?
“We’ve always been looking at all the top performers, we’ve been looking at all the gold medallists here and you can see who won the most gold medals. They are all tested,” he said.
“They have probably become very strong, very straight and may be, all of them have been very careful.”
