A former doctor to the Chinese Olympic team claims that a State-operated programme resulted in the doping of 10,000 athletes in the 1980s, including Olympic teams and children as young as 11. “The State insisted that all sports teams had to use doping substances”, said Xue Yinxian, a former doctor to the Chinese gymnastics team, in an interview with ARD (video below). “Football, volleyball, basketball, table tennis, badminton, track and field, swimming, diving, gymnastics and weightlifting”.

Yinxian alleges that doping controls within China during this period were designed to ensure that athletes travelling to foreign tournaments would not test positive. If they tested positive for prohibited substances, they would be withdrawn from the event. If they tested negative, the code ‘Grandma is home’ would be used to signify that they were safe to travel.

She also alleges that children as young as 11 were given prohibited substances, and her diaries record the effects of such substances that athletes reported to her. She says that she never prescribed prohibited substances to athletes.

Yinxian says she was dismissed at the end of the 1980s for refusing to inject athletes. In August this year, Yinxian applied for political asylum in Germany, where she was interviewed by ARD, after making the same allegations in an interview with the Sydney Morning Herald ahead of the London 2012 Olympics. Her son told ARD that the Chinese police sent officers to her home in an attempt to silence her.

‘While WADA was only formed in November 1999 as the international, independent, agency tasked with combatting doping in sport, the Agency will ensure that, if action is warranted and feasible under the World Anti-Doping Code (Code), the necessary and appropriate steps will be taken’, read a statement from the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA). ‘As a first step, the Agency has asked its independent Intelligence and Investigations (I&I) team to initiate an investigative process in order to collect and analyze available information in coordination with external partners’. The Chinese Olympic Committee (COC) has yet to comment.