Lust for gold at all costs must end if China is to stamp out cheating and corruption, says sports minister
Liu Peng says country must ditch its obsession with medals to end corruption in its ranks
China must ditch its obsession with winning gold medals if it really wants to root out corruption in sports, especially ahead of next year's Rio Olympics, the country's sports chief was quoted as saying yesterday.
Corruption in international sports is in focus because of a US and Swiss probe into soccer's world governing body Fifa.
China, which is aggressively seeking to stamp out graft in Communist Party and government ranks, has also sought to eject corrupt elements from its sports establishment, particularly within soccer, which has been hit by match-fixing scandals.
It is mainly focused on rewards for putting gold above all else, which has warped the spirit of sports
China was hit by two new sports graft scandals over the summer, with probes into a deputy sports minister who sat on China's Olympics committee, and another into the country's volleyball chief.
Few details have been released on either.
Speaking at an internal meeting on fighting corruption, sports minister Liu Peng said the sector needed to think deeply about why it had a graft problem and take "decisive steps" to excise it.
