From: solman@athena.mit.edu (Jason W Solinsky)
Subject: Re: Chinese athlets
Organization: Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Date: Fri, 31 Jul 1992 05:54:42 GMT

In article <(~{5K6,F=~})DENG.92Jul30153802@math12.bnlux1.bnl.gov>, deng@bnlux1.bnl.gov (~{5K6,F=~}) writes:
|> >>>>> In article <1992Jul30.130304.9741@waikato.ac.nz>
|> >>>>> "higham" == higham  <higham@waikato.ac.nz> writes:
|> 
|>   higham> follow swimming to any major extent, I have watched the Olympics
|>   higham> with interest over many years and do not recall many Chinese
|>   higham> swimmers taking gold medals. I may be wrong though.  Neverthess,
|> 
|> The Chinese swimmers have come a long way. In the Xth and XIth Asian games
|> (every 4 years), they become very competative with the Japanese swimmers
|> who used to dominate in swimming in the asia. 
|> 
|> If you observe how our Chinese athletes catch up with the rest of world,
|> there seems to be a pattern. It's only from my observation. Take ping-pong
|> for example, China got it start off by an Indonesian-Chinese who went to
|> China to compete. Unfortunately he was killed by the communists in the
|> culture revolution. Some Indonesian(or Malasian)-Chinese went back to China
|> to coach and compete, now China is a power house in badminton.
|> Incidentally, China lost Thomas cup to Malaysia whose coaches are former
|> Chinese national champions.  Women's vollyball had a jump start after China
|> invited a Japanese coach to lead the team. Chinese women dominated
|> vollyball for quite a few years, they are still a contender in this game.
|> China started to invite foreign swimming experts about 10 years ago, among
|> them Americans, Australian and Germans (I think). Needless to say, the
|> gymnastics and diving were helped by the Soviets.  Now the Chinese national
|> team has a German as the head coach.  The pattern is clear that whence
|> China has a few know-hows, given enough time, they can be as competitive as
|> any other people.
|> 
|> Back to the question of illegal drugs, Lin Li has just broken WR in 200m
|> IM.  So let's wait and see the test results ;-). 

Earlier I suggested that anybody suggesting that the Chinese are using drugs
is committing libel. After seeing the information on the East German swimming
program, I have to reconsider this. I had previously thought that the East
Germans swimmers were merely widely suspected of having used drugs. I found
it startling to find that the people who ran the East German swimming program
openly admitted that the program was based on steroids.

What is truly disturbing is that I had previously known that in 1986 an East
German went to China to set up a program based on the East German system.
I would like to believe that the Chinese incorporated East German training
techniques without incorporating the drugs, but given that the East Germans
used increasingly sophisticated anabolic steroids for twenty years, and were
able engineer them to avoid detection, I don't believe that the spectre of
drugs will ever be lifted from the program.

Jason W. Solinsky

NOTE: Lin Li looked GOOD in that 200m IM. Somehow I got the impression that her
performance just wasn't drug related.