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 | Thursday, April 27, 2000, updated at 18:00(GMT+8) | ||||||||||||
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Liu Focuses on Olympics After Doping ScareLiu Guoliang, who has been cleared of doping suspicions after a lengthy battle to prove his innocence, said Thursday that he has now concentrated on the defense of two Olympic table tennis titles he won in Atlanta."I feel so relieved," said the 24-year-old Chinese. "You can hardly imagine what a kind of life I led in past six months." After a test in a Dutch laboratory suggested an "elevated value of epitestosterone", Liu had been under great pressure. "I didn't take anything illegal, but I didn't know how to explain or convince others. I couldn't sleep well, often jolted awaken by bad dreams," Liu said. The International Table Tennis Federation (ITTF) cleared Liu's name Wednesday morning after a three-month-long investigation showed "no evidence for exogenous origin of epitestosterone" in Liu's samples and there was "no doping offense". "After miserable six months, I will go back to my job -- defend Olympic gold medals in Sydney," said Liu. Liu tested positive on August 8, 1999, the day he won the world singles championship in Eindhoven of the Netherlands. One day earlier, he tested negative after taking the men's doubles event with Kong Linghui. ITTF didn't notify Liu of his positive test until October 24, 1999, when Liu was playing in the Austrian Open. "It was shocking," Liu recalled. " 'You are finished', I talked to myself. I didn't know what to say, what to do. I called the Chinese Table Tennis Association (CTTF) and they said they trusted me." Liu took two unannounced tests by the ITTF investigative officials on February 2 and 7. Both tests cleared Liu, said CTTA general secretary Yang Shu'an. "ITTF has used the most advanced method of doping check and they have proved Liu's innocence," said Yang. Another CTTA official said the world ruling body of the sport had used "IRMS" -- Isotopic Ratio Measurements, to test Liu's samples. "We've never lost trust in Guoliang," said Chinese head coach Cai Zhenhua. "We let him play the final of the world team championships because we believe he is clean." China lost to Sweden 3-2 in the men's final in Kuala Lumpur in February this year, as Liu lost to both Jan-Ove Waldner and Jorgen Persson. As a table tennis' all-time great, Liu is one of the two players in history to have won a "Grand Slam" of Olympic, world championships and World Cup singles crowns. The other is Waldner.
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