Whatever Happened to Junxia Wang?

One other thing that bothers me is that, these distance miracles were never produced by Chinese men. Curious, eh? Do the Chinese simply value women's running more than men's? Are their women simply tougher than their men?

Clearly not. But it seems more than a coincidence that women stand to improve their strength and recovery the most in using testosterone derivatives because their bodies produce far less of it than males. Relatively speaking males won't see as great a benefit.

Chinese men are more lazy when it comes to sports like athletics and swmimming compared with Chinese women. This is a cultural thing.

Ghost in Korea

This post deserves repeating...I find myself laughing after reading it...I generally trust athletes until they test negative BUTsomeone said it best, ANYBODY with a critical mind who reads the below knows there was something illegal going on at the meetCOME ON, if it happened in the US, Kenya, wherever i would say the exact same thingthe fact that they never did it again simply makes the point even more clear

So in light of all the compelling evidence (and it is indeed compelling) that something fraudulent was going on, why were the records accepted and ratified without question?

good question - I have no ideai know very little about ratification procedures and of course nothing about what they were in 1993

OldXCguy wrote:

So in light of all the compelling evidence (and it is indeed compelling) that something fraudulent was going on, why were the records accepted and ratified without question?

ghost wrote:

One other thing that bothers me is that, these distance miracles were never produced by Chinese men. Curious, eh? Do the Chinese simply value women's running more than men's? Are their women simply tougher than their men?

Clearly not. But it seems more than a coincidence that women stand to improve their strength and recovery the most in using testosterone derivatives because their bodies produce far less of it than males. Relatively speaking males won't see as great a benefit.

Chinese men are more lazy when it comes to sports like athletics and swmimming compared with Chinese women. This is a cultural thing.

Ghost in Korea

Or it could be, as it was said, that those Chinese men were Wang Junxia and her gang of "female" miracle runners. After Ma's army made all the best male runners pretend to be women runners, there weren't any fast males left.

I'd seriously pay someone big bucks to see the race videos from that meet. I'd also pay lots for the Daniel Komen 2 Mile WR, which people on Letsrun apparently have but for some reason won't post!

Ummm or JR

Training hard is not the only answer or someone else would just train harder. I'm sure you know that drugs allow you to train at unnaturally high levels? The explanation of she just trained harder than anyone else doesn't come close to explaining her dramatic rise and fall.

I remember a few members of Ma's army after his departure stated they were given things and injected with stuff that was unknown to them?

ghost wrote:

Chinese men are more lazy when it comes to sports like athletics and swmimming compared with Chinese women. This is a cultural thing.

Ghost in Korea

Sounds like a random generalization but perhaps you have a point. Never been to china so I don't know.

BUT... notice that chinese male runners are busting their asses right now to make a decent showing in Beijing 2008. With the except of HH, they pretty much suck.

I guess that I was too excited to read American Runner...and got Tim quickly confused with Alan Culpepper.

I want more of this thread!

I am truly shocked by the lack of knowledge of the posters on the first page of this tread. Anyone who truly has any historical knowledge of this sport knows that Wang and scores of her teammates were doping. If Wang wasn't doping then there was no holocaust. The evidence for both is overwhelming.

In 1993, the world’s ten fastest women’s 3,000m times in history were all run at the same track meet in Beijing, all by Chinese runners at their national championship. Seven of these ten times have not been surpassed since (as of Feb. 2009). This Beijing meet also produced the worlds two fastest women’s 10,000m times and the world’s two fastest women’s 1,500m times of all time. Knowledgeable T&F fans consider this Beijing meet to be the dirtiest T&F meet in history. The Chinese did their own drug testing and said no one tested positive.

Then in 1997, the same scenario occurred at another national championship meet in Shanghi where the Chinese women ran 9 of the 16 fastest 1,500m times in history (and 2 of history’s 3 fastest). They also ran the world’s five fastest 5,000m times in history.

In both these meets there were questions about the tracks' lengths. The tracks were re-measured and found to be the correct length. Then attention changed the official timing clock, which some though might have been doctored to run slow. I believe that was disproved by looking at some available video. That left only doping as the reason so many unbelievable times could be set my one country at one meet.

But the IAAF without positive drug test results from Wang and her teammates, let Wang’s records and that of other Chinese stand. I vaguely recall that the IAAF asked to see the details of the Chinese test results but was refused by the Chinese who claimed the IAAF had no legal right at that time for this information. Very few of the many Chinese athletes who ran these incredible times ever competed outside of China -- for the rather obvious reason they would test positive by an honest testing agency. I also believe Wang came very close to breaking the world's 5,000m record enroute to her 10,000m world record.

Surprisingly, a few years later in 2001, the IOC awards Beijing the ’08 Olympics. Fortunately, the Chinese government was also told they had to immediately get serious and clean up their doping problems if they wanted to be awarded this Olympics. The Chinese agreed to those terms and did quickly put in place a creditable anti-doping program. Since 2002 I don't think a single Chinese athlete has tested positive for drugs when competing internationally outside of China.

However, the IAAF lost its credibility by officially recognizing all of these unbelievable ’93 Beijing and ’97 Shanghi performances to be legit. Looking at the world junior (under age 20) records, it is apparent that even the Chinese teenage girls were heavily doping during the 1990s. Since better drug testing was introduced by China and the IAAF around 2002, there have been no fast Chinese women distance runners at 1,500m, 3,000m or 5,000m. In 2007, China had only one women ranked on the top-30 at these three distances (Fei Xue was ranked a modest #27 in the 5,000m). Today, the Chinese women aren’t a factor at all in any T&F event. Despite China's large population, they don't have the genetics to be world class distance runners from 800m thru 5,000m. Many top Chinese runners from the 1990s now have very serious health problems.

Today, China does have a few top female marathon runners and it is quite likely they are clean.

In summary, China had a widespread government supported, or government overlooked, doping program, in the 1990s -- but was willing to completely shut that down to get the '08 Olympics. Now that the ‘08 Olympics has passed, let's hope the Chinese continue to clamp down on doping. Those that have studied this issue in depth believe every world top-25 ranked time by the Chinese in the 1990s was doped. All, or nearly all, of these performances were run in China whose doping program was corrupt.

Bravo!

Well said!

Nothing pissed me off more than to re-go through this thread and see how dumb Cock Ring was about this whole thing. Very frustrating.

It is amazing how stupid so many people are in American.

Wang Junxia is a women, of course, and a very nice person.

She ran the women's record of 29:31.8 for 10,000 meters on a 400 meter track.

She trained very hard, certainly harder than lazy Americans.

There is no evidence that she took any drugs, nor that taking any drugs would have helped her to run any faster.

Certainly all the Americans taking drugs hadn't helped them to do any better. Americans think they can do nothing and take drugs and compete with the best runners in the world, so it is natural that most of them are skeptical about runners who actually train and work hard. Does Radcliffe take drugs? Is she really a man? Why don't you check into these things before accusing people where you know nothing about them.

Yeahhhhhhh! Good one, JR!

Anyway...here is a little more that I've found on this:

Quote from Arthur Lyniard on these records:

"If only one woman had gone out and had run that fast 3000 time, I’d have been a little skeptical. When five of them do it, I realize they have a [legitimate] program going."

AND this feel-good tidbit:

"Part of the runners' work has to do not only with running and eating -- or "eating bitterness," as Ma calls his rigid techniques -- but concentrating, too. When Wang's brother was killed in an automobile-bicycle accident in July, she wasn't told about it until her coach thought it best -- after the world championships and the Chinese nationals games, two months later."

This is one of the most important posts I've ever seen on letsrun. As far as I or anyone else should be concerned, the two all-time fastest women's 10k times in history occurred at the Beijing Olympics this past summer.

"Despite China's large population, they don't have the genetics to be world class distance runners from 800m thru 5,000m. Many top Chinese runners from the 1990s now have very serious health problems." quote

You've possibly opened Pandora's box with the first sentence of the quote.

Please give some examples of their,(Chines female distance runners), resulting health problems.

Mo Mo Ya wrote:

"Despite China's large population, they don't have the genetics to be world class distance runners from 800m thru 5,000m. Many top Chinese runners from the 1990s now have very serious health problems." quote

You've possibly opened Pandora's box with the first sentence of the quote.

I don't think he has "opened Pandora's box" at all-it is quite clear that the Chinese do not have the build to be as successful at 1500m-10000m as they were.

Their form is just different then all of the other competitors. Now running form doesn't necessarily mean they were on drugs, but they run like...well, like men. They even look like men.

I think it is pretty clear that something was up with the 1993 meet and the 1997 meet, and it is pretty sad that the IAAF let such rediculous times stand. In fact, the IAAF has done a pretty piss-poor job with many of the women's world records-100m,200m,400m,800m,1500m,3000m and 10000m are clearly drug aided, and also wind aided in the case of the 100m.

Oh and J.R.-you can say that they are faster because they trained harder, but you don't think that the Kenyan and Ethiopian women train as hard as possible? Drugs don't just help performances, they help handle an increased training load, and it's pretty obvious to those with over 4th grade logic capacity that there was more then just turtle in Ma's turtle soup.

You are correct. Ignoring Wang's doped world record, the world's two fastest 10K times were indeed run at this past year's Olympics -- in the race where Flanagan finished in 3rd for the bronze medal. Due to Wang's cheating, these two great times never got the publicity they deserved.

In my long post above, my comments on the number of runners who broke world records and placed high on all-time performance lists during the ’93 Beijing and ’97 Shanghi meets was of course based on the world records and all-time lists at the time of those '93 & '97 meets.

I think the above poster meant to say illegitimate, not legitimate.

Lastly, all of Radcliffe's top performances were tested using tests that were much more sophisticated then those Wang faced. Many of Radcliffe's top performances were outside Great Britian and in countries with reputable drug testing agencies. All of Wang's top performances, and those of her teammates at the time, were run in China who had a corrupt anti-doping agency. Out-of-competition tests were rare in Wang's day, and very common in Radcliffe's day. It would have been easy for Wang to stop her doping a few weeks or months before an important competition, as the Olympics, and have the drugs clear her body enough so that she didn't test positive. She would still get a good deal of benefit from having been on drugs a month or more prior.

How do you think Marion Jones passed those 100+ drug tests. Yes, by letting the drugs clear her system before a race where nearly all of her tests were given. Even in Marion's day, out-of-competition testing was infrequent and Marion knew how to hide (without penalty) when the drug testers paid a surprise visit. Why do you think the IAAF is now requiring elite athletes to be available one hour every day for a surprise visit? No more getting a cell phone call and having 2 hours to get back to your residence to meet the testers. In 2 hours, things can be done to mask drug use and the masking agents are not detectable or are commonly ingested food items.

In spite of weak drug testing procedures in the 1990s, none of Want's preformances outside of China approached her performances in China. That is also true of all elite Chinese female runners in the 1990s. The few that did leave China to compete almost always had subpar performances.

Although it is unclear where this is from, this article has detailed splits from the women's 10k WR performance:

http://www.crowndiamond.net/techpack/0447.pdf

Talk about hard to believe - her final 5k was a WR (even if you adjust for the running start) and her final 3k was also a WR, if you ignore the 3k WR she set at the same meet.

All this after running a 10k PR of 32:29 the year before?

fUrCeOsNhN wrote:

I think it is pretty clear that something was up with the 1993 meet and the 1997 meet, and it is pretty sad that the IAAF let such rediculous times stand. In fact, the IAAF has done a pretty piss-poor job with many of the women's world records-100m,200m,400m,800m,1500m,3000m and 10000m are clearly drug aided, and also wind aided in the case of the 100m.

Though I believe all of those times were set by women doped to their eyeballs, on what basis do you want IAAF to eliminate those times? Based on an internet poll of Letsrun.com users? If the marks met the standards for ratification than they did, regardless of subjective opinion. Our sport has enough corruption without empowering some bureaucrat to determine the "legitimacy" of records outside of the standards that already exist.

It would be tough to justify eliminating times, but the IAAF is in a position to qualify each performance with 1) a list of known PEDs at the time of the performance, and 2) a list of tests that were applied to the athlete before and after the performance. We can figure out the rest.