The youngest drugged student caught in early August's doping raid to a Northeast Chinese training camp is as young as 15 years old, said a spokesman with the Chinese Olympic Committee's anti-doping commission on Thursday.

In the raid spearheaded by officials from the anti-doping commission and China's State General Administration of Sport (CSGAS), exactly two years away from the opening ceremony of the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games, the appalling evidences of collective doping were found.

When the seven-member team made a surprise visit to a Harbin training camp, used by the Liaoning Anshan Athletics School to prepare for the 10th Liaoning Provincial Junior Games, school staff were caught injecting teenage students with banned substances.

Anti-doping commission spokesman Zhao Jian said the raid was launched on a tip-off.

Zhao said the anti-doping officials found 25 bottles of EPO, nine bottles of testosterone and 17 bottles of unidentified drugs at the room where school staff were injecting drugs to students.

In the refrigerator in school headmaster Shao Huibin's room, 300 potions of EPO, nine bottles of testosterone and 141 bottles of steroids were found, said the spokesman.

The raid lasted into August 9 morning and eight out of 10 students caught using drugs were tested positive for steroids.

Zhao said the youngest doped student was only 15 with the oldest 18.

The Anshan school was the second Chinese sports school charged of "collective doping".

Liaoning Shenyang Sports School, based in Liaoning's provincial capital Shenyang and about 80 kilometers away from Liaoning's third largest city Anshan, was charged with collective doping in August 2002.

Staff at the Anshan school face criminal charges under China's anti-doping code, which was enacted in February 2004.

"It is the second doping scandal involving a sports school and it is even more serious because it happened after the promulgation of China's anti-doping code and it happened as the 2008 Olympics is closing in," said a CSGAS statement on Wednesday.

"The management of the school not only defied the law but also put the youths' health at great danger," said the statement.

Liaoning is a sports powerhouse in China, churning out bunches of Olympic and world champions, and its status in Chinese athletics is unmatchable.

Guru athletics coach Ma Junren, who led Chinese women runners to a sweep of world records and world titles in the 1990s, is from Liaoning and he had retired from the position as Liaoning's deputy sports chief.

Liaoning is also home to hero-turned-villain Sun Yingjie, the world half marathon champion who had been tipped as a medal hopeful for the 2008 Olympic women's runs before she went down as a doping cheat in 2005.

(Xinhua News Agency August 25, 2006)