China have escaped the threat of being kicked out of the world swimming championships, but the price they will have to pay for the drugs controversy is set to be an expensive one.
The cases of drug use by Chinese swimmers means Beijing's proposed bid to host the Olympic Games in 2008 is probably damaged beyond repair, the International Olympic Committee's president Juan Antonio Samaranch said in New York yesterday.
"They have the right to pursue a bid," he said. "But it is up to the IOC members what is acceptable. I think they would be in trouble. I think it's very clear. Many would not be in favour."
Meanwhile, however, the Chinese Olympic Committee moved to defend its competitors amid the scandal in Perth. "One cannot say that this affair has tarnished the image of Chinese sport. It's only a little black stain," the committee's secretary general Tu Mingde told a hastily arranged press conference in Beijing. "This affair is just about swimming, one must not generalise about all Chinese sport."
The Beijing committee was engaged in a delicate damage limitation exercise after swimming's ruling body FINA announced that four competitors - Wang Luna, Cai Huijue, Zhang Yi and Wang Wei - tested positive for the banned diuretic Triamterene, which medical experts say is a masking agent for anabolic steroid use.
The committee announced it was launching an inquiry and that its swimmers would be penalised if found guilty.
China had already been shamed at the Perth championship with the discovery of 13 vials of human growth hormone in the baggage of breaststroker Yuan Yuan at Sydney Airport.
Yuan was suspended by FINA for four years while her coach Zhou Zhewen, who admitted to Australian Customs to packing the vacuum flask containing the vials in the bag, was banned for up to 15 years.
Even if "the situation is serious . . . nothing has proved" that the trainers had given the substances to the swimmers," Tu said.
China lacked the necessary means to fight drug abuse and had to work "hand in hand" with the international community to "wipe out this phenomenon.
"We have just imported two machines to carry out drug tests. Last year, 3,540 tests were carried out in China, but the method used was a little out of date.
"Since China opened up to the outside, our athletes have had more contact with abroad and have learnt good and bad. Illegal drugs have been produced abroad," Tu said, before attacking the Australian press for being "unfriendly" towards China. "Other countries commit mistakes. "Why do you grab us, refuse to let go and blow it up saying it's done by the government, it's organised or systematic?"
In Perth, the general-secretary of the Chinese Swimming Association Yuan Jiawei expressed "great surprise and regret" but added it was unfair to suggest the whole team was guilty. "This is individual behaviour," Yuan said. "It shouldn't be taken as a collective one."
Earlier, FINA said it was powerless to expel China from the championships. FINA secretary Gunnar Werner said under the sport's rules a country could be thrown out only if its swimmers produced four positive tests for steroids within a 12-month period.
The Chinese denials have been greeted with widespread scepticism and yesterday the Swedish federation announced it would pull out of a World Cup event in Beijing next month.
"The Swedish Swimming Federation finds the extensive drug abuse that has been revealed among Chinese swimmers at these championships a major threat to the reputation of the sport throughout the world," president Jan Nordlund said in a statement.
The president of the German Swimming Federation (DSV) Ruediger Tretov said the Germans also were considering pulling out of the meeting. Tretov told a television interviewer the DSV would make a decision after consulting its swimmers.
