China is defending its anti-doping enforcement as it summons home a female swimmer caught with banned human growth hormone at the world championships.

The discovery in Australia is embarrassing for officials who have denied that a string of swimming records set by Chinese women were due to use of steroids and other banned performance-enhancing substances.

Tu Mingde, secretary-general of the Chinese Olympic Committee, insists the country's sports officials regularly test Chinese athletes for drugs and punished violators.

He says at this stage Yuan Yuan, the 21-year-old swimmer, and her coach Zhou Zewen, have been pulled out of the competition and ordered home for violating Australian customs law and Chinese rules on team travel.

A test on Friday by Australian officials confirmed that 13 vials found in Yuan's luggage on her arrival the previous day held human growth hormone.

Coach Zhou claims he put the vials in Yuan's bag to pass them along to someone in Australia on behalf of a friend.

Secretary-general Tu said that violated Chinese team rules against transporting things for other people.

But he has appealed for restraint, saying all of the facts in the case were not yet known and other Chinese swimmers shouldn't be penalised. "We should not, because of some individual's mistakes, extend that to say everyone on the team cannot compete. That would not be fair," he said.

Tu added that China would investigate the source of the substance and decide whether to punish Zhou and Yuan, a member of a military swim team in the southern city of Guangzhou.

Yuan Yuan could face a four-year ban

Yuan also could be banned from international competition for up to four years.

Suspicions that China's swimming team engaged in systematic doping rose after Chinese women won 12 out of 16 events in the last World Championships in Rome in 1994.

Two months later, seven Chinese swimmers tested positive for steroid use at the Asian Games in Hiroshima.

China toughened its drug testing program following the scandal in Hiroshima.

Sports officials claimed that testing was further intensified last year with 3,349 tests conducted on athletes between January and October.

But doubts about the validity of their performance were revived when Chinese women set two world records and recorded best times for 1997 in eight of 13 individual events at last October's China National Games in Shanghai.

John Leonard, executive director of the World Swimming Coaches' Association, said on Thursday that the discovery in Yuan's luggage indicated there was "mass coordinated cheating" by China.

Leonard said the Chinese had been suspected of switching from steroids to human growth hormone.

Unlike steroids, there is no test to detect the hormone in athletes.
 

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