Source: CCTV.com | 07-31-2008 08:54

China's sports administration has announced that the country's athletes will be drug-free during the Beijing Olympics. It also revealed the latest results of its thousands of tests on Chinese athletes, showing lower doping rates compared to the international average.

China's anti-doping centers have conducted over 5000 tests on the country's Olympic participants. Two doping athletes have been banned for life, including China's top backstroker Ouyang Kunpeng.

Zhao Jian, Deputy Director of Chinese National Anti-Doping
Agency

The positive result rate dropped to 0.4 percent this year from last year's 1.8, lower than the international level of nearly 2 percent.

Zhao Jian, Deputy Director of Chinese National Anti-Doping Agency said "Two-thousand athletes on the national team or on the national training team are all on our anti-doping test list. Our plan is to conduct 4,500 tests on them. We have comparatively tight controls on the Chinese national team."

China's 41 anti-doping centers, 34 located in Beijing and 7 in the co-host cities, are now in operation.

With the most equipment in the Games history, anti-doping facilities for the Beijing Olympics are the biggest and most up-to-date in the world.

This year 4,500 tests will be conducted, nearly 1000 more than in Athens. The top five athletes in each event will receive tests. About 800 will be urine detection and 900 will be blood tests.

New rules set by the IOC specify that an athlete may be tested several times in one day. Missing two separate tests during the Games will be considered a violation of anti-doping rules.