A Chinese team at world swim competition last weekend.

Olympics Notes: China is trying to tamp down expectations that it will sweep the gold medals table at the Beijing 2008 Summer Games.

This recent China Daily story quoted a former mayor of Shanghai, Xu Kuangdi, addressing the issue of how much gold China can spin out of the home Games.

"Our country's national strength is still not good enough, so I think it's inappropriate to make a big fuss over the goal of becoming No. 1 on the Olympic gold medal tally," Xu told the newspaper.

Xu warned of putting too much stress on the gold medals: "I think it will be a quite satisfactory result if our country can enter the top three of the gold medal tally at the 2008 Beijing Olympics," he said.

I wrote a blog post earlier this month that gives medal wrap-ups for China in recent Games. All you need to know is that Chinese athletes are rising fast in their quest for gold. And so are public expectations. Another recent Xinhua news agency article began this way: "To many, China's goal at the 2008 Olympic Games is nothing but topping the medals table."

Item: A San Francisco Chronicle sportswriter had an interesting column over the weekend, pointing out a truism about the 2008 Games: The spotlight will not just be on the sporting venues but on the whole country.

Here's an excerpt:

"This figures to be an Olympics where much of the outside world cares more about what goes on in the country as a whole than with the quotidian march of sporting events.

China has a number of big-ticket issues, including its booming economy, pollution, human rights record and religious intolerance."

Item: Suspicions of doping are already bubbling up. The U.S. swimming coach brought up the issue in Australia over the weekend, telling The Age newspaper that he still recalls how Chinese swimmers dominated at the 1994 world swimming titles but were later shown to have doped up.

This is a quote from the story: "There's a history and where there's a history, there's suspicion, but I would prefer (to think) that they have cleaned up their act," said the coach, Mark Schubert.

All I can add is, who dares to throw the first rock on the sad subject of sports doping?