As China prepares to host this summer's Olympic Games, the chief medical officer to the Hong Kong Olympic team says the world can expect rampant doping among Olympic athletes that will go largely undetected.
Dr Julian Chang, who also serves as chairman of the East Asian Games Medical Commission, paints a picture of a professional and Olympic sports culture where drug cheats are leagues ahead of drug detectors and where winners use drugs and losers do not.
Sports that depend upon physical power or explosive bursts of speed - such as weightlifting, bodybuilding and track and field - are particularly susceptible to doping cheats, he says, but no sport is untainted.
'As long as there is money in it,' Chang says, 'no sports are immune. For athletes, it is true to say that if you don't do it, you're going to have a hard time competing. If you are a top-10 athlete [in the Olympics], performance-enhancing drugs will make you a top-three medallist. If you are top three, they can get you a gold medal.'
Other prominent figures in the Hong Kong sports community accused the doctor of speculation and over-generalisation, but they did not dispute his main point - that doping had become a way of life for many top athletes in professional and Olympic sports.
The punishing physical regime required of these athletes makes drugs such as anabolic steroids and human growth hormone (HGH) an irresistible temptation, Chang says. These drugs not only increase power, speed and stamina, he says, but also allow for a far more rigorous training schedule than a drug-free athlete could endure, and for quicker recovery from injury.