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Dirk Lange: ‘It Goes Without Saying that we speak out for a 100% drug-free sport’
- Updated: May 27, 2016
Dirk Lange, the German coach who has led the national teams of South Africa and Germany, has defended the international coach consultancy program in the face of allegations that he is harbouring Chinese coaches and swimmers keen to avoid anti-doping tests and working with chief doping rogue of the 1990s, Zhou Ming.
Contracts are in place that forbid the use of doping as an option, says Lange, for any who wish to stay in a DLP Project, which also values the “presumption of innocence” at the outset of any relationship. Forced by events to spell it out, Lange notes:
“It goes without saying that we speak out for a 100% drug-free sport.”
Lange runs international camps as part of his DLP Project in Belek, Turkey. Among teams currently at the training centre are squads from Germany, Sweden, including double World champion Sarah Sjostrom, and China.
The Australian Daily Telegraph ran a story two days ago in which it was suggested that the Chinese contigent, including national team members, was working with Zhou Ming, a man with an appalling record that led to a life ban in 1998, the suspension later declared by Xhina to have been for eight years not life, despite a press-conference statement to the contrary.
The Chinese squad in Turkey – DLP Project
The thrust of the Telegraph story was that the squad had headed to Belek in order to avoid the anti-doping scrunity they would face in Australia.
That some of those in Belek know of Zhou Ming is not in question but Lange was quick to note that he was not in Belek, never had been and that the teams working there were subject to international anti-doping tests in the same way as they apply to all other elite swimmers around the world.
Sensitivity is riding high in Australia on the back of a crisis of confidence sparked by a spate of positive doping tests, in the past two years. The highest profile case was that of Sun Yang*, the Olympic 00 and 1500m freestyle champion, while last month China was forced to acknowledge that it had six positive tests on its books that remained undeclared, three dating back to late nothern summer last year.
Final judgments are pending in the Clenbuterol cases of Wang Lizhuo* and An Jianbao*, slapped with only warnings by China, even though a year is the minimum suspension usually applied to such cases. There cases pending, Wang and An raced at Chinese Olympic trials last month and made the cut for Rio 2016.
Their cases were revealed when The Times and this website ran reports from whistleblowers inside China concerned that the publication of positive tests was being delayed until after Olympic trials. China rushed through warnings and reprimands for two cases, left another unresolved from last year and has yet to declare decisions or details of three others cases from January this year.
Against that backdrop, Lange finds himself at the eye of a storm in a season of WADA doping inquiries that are starting to extend beyond Russia and track and field.
When asked whether he was …
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