Athletics

What on earth were China’s women runners on back in the 1990s?

Kenya’s Beatrice Chebet ran the second fastest women’s 3,000m time in history last weekend – but was still way off the record set 32 years ago

Wang Junxia raises her arms in triumph during the women's 10,000m at the 1993 Chinese National Games in Beijing, China, September 8, 1993. Photograph: Forrest Anderson/Getty Images
Wang Junxia raises her arms in triumph during the women's 10,000m at the 1993 Chinese National Games in Beijing, China, September 8, 1993. Photograph: Forrest Anderson/Getty Images
Ian O'Riordan's picture
Ian O'Riordan
Sat May 31 2025 - 06:00

As with most seismic episodes in life, I can recall exactly where we were and what we were doing. As international students in the Ivy League, there was no fear of deportation to rattle our worlds in September 1993. But the news that a woman on the other side of the world had just run eight minutes and six seconds for 3,000 metres was shocking.

This was among the legion of world records broken by Chinese women at the 1993 Beijing National Games, where six women ran under previous world records in three different events a total of 14 times, wrapped up by the 8:06.11 clocked by Wang Junxia to win the 3,000 metres. It seemed quite simply inconceivable, and the passing of time has only reinforced that notion.

We were in our senior year, close to our running prime, and Wang’s 8:06.11 was faster than any of us had run on the men’s track team, international or otherwise. There was nothing whatsoever sexist or chauvinistic in being dismayed, only the crushing realisation our times were paling into insignificance.

I didn’t have my ear to the ground so much in those days and the news had come via a weekly call home, as all news usually did, my dad coming on the phone and dispensing with any pleasantries. “You will not believe this,” he said. The women’s 1,500 metre, 3,000 metre and 10,000 metre world records had all been utterly obliterated in Beijing, with a crazy series of times that in no way added up.

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I didn’t imagine I’d be writing about them 32 years later. Wang’s 3,000 metre time still stands as the world record, for years untouchable. Kenya’s Beatrice Chebet, the double Olympic champion from Paris last summer, got closest when she ran 8:11.56 in the Diamond League in Rabat last Sunday. Still more than five seconds off Wang’s mark.

Maybe we shouldn’t have been shocked. After all, we’d already had ample warning of what the Chinese women were capable of. A month before, at the 1993 World Championships in Stuttgart, they pulled off what is now considered one of the great daylight robberies in the long history of track and field – and inextricably entangled with the career of our own Sonia O’Sullivan.

In one of her last races before Stuttgart, O’Sullivan clocked 8:30.12 to win the 3,000 metres at the Zurich Golden League, the fastest time in Europe, making her one of the gold medal favourites. At that point in time, little was known about the nine Chinese women runners in Stuttgart, all entered in the 1,500 metres, 3,000 metres and 10,000 metres, and all coached by Ma Junren, who had set up several high-altitude training camps in remote locations around China.

Junren had no athletics background, smoked 40 cigarettes a day and admitted losing up to 10 per cent of his athletes through injury.

He kept his women distance runners in strict regimental tow, promptly earning them the title Ma’s Army. Despite their complete lack of global championship experience, they won all three medals in the 3,000 metres in Stuttgart, led home by Qu Yunxia, relegating O’Sullivan to fourth.

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Six days later, O’Sullivan did manage to break the Chinese dominance in the 1,500 metres, winning silver behind Liu Dong. Earlier in the week, Wang won the 10,000 metres, meaning the Chinese women claimed six out of a possible nine medals in the three running events they entered. This was only a prelude to what was to come in Beijing a month later.

Wang broke three world records, first lowering the 10,000 metre mark to 29:31.78, smashing the 30:17.74 which had stood to Norway’s lngrid Kristiansen since 1986. Wang then ran a 3,000 metre world record of 8:12.19 in the heats, before improving that to 8:06.11 in the final. Yunxia also built on her Stuttgart success to break the 1,500 metre world record, running 3:50.46.

The previous records there had stood to Tatyana Kazankina from the former Soviet Union, whose career ended abruptly in 1984 when she was suspended for 18 months for refusing to do a drugs test.

God knows what kind of anti-doping programme was in place in Beijing in 1993 but none of Ma’s Army ever failed a test. Yunxia’s 1,500 metre record stood for 22 years, and Wang’s 10,000 metre record for 23 years. Junren always put their success down to their marathon-a-day training, plus his own range of Chinese potions, including the warm blood of a freshly decapitated turtle.

The following summer, O’Sullivan improved her Irish 3,000 metre record to 8:21.64 at Crystal Palace in London, the fastest time ever run outside of China, and which stood as the European record for eight years. After winning the 5,000 metres at the 1995 World Championships in Helsinki, O’Sullivan pushed herself harder again when preparing for the 1996 Atlanta Olympics, possibly too hard. Wang won gold in the 5,000 metres, and silver in the 10,000 metres.

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According to Chinese state media reports, released in February 2016, all nine of Ma’s Army in Stuttgart were forced to take “large doses of illegal drugs over the years”. A letter, signed by Wang and her eight team-mates in 1995, also detailed the regime of state-sponsored doping.

In October 2017 there was further evidence, former Chinese team doctor Xue Yinxian telling German broadcaster ARD that all medals won by Chinese athletes in the 1980s and 1990s should be handed back, given they were “showered in doping”.

Maybe it is too late now for those medals to be returned, or for those record times to be erased, but one question remains: what on earth were they taking? They’d clearly discovered some unique concoction of banned substances to be that far ahead of everyone else in 1993, including us poor and innocent hopefuls in the Ivy League.

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