China’s top disciplinary watchdog has vowed to investigate the General Administration of Sport’s publishing of a games rules draft that counts medal ranking as a major achievement just days after the watchdog forbade it from doing so.

Shi Zehua, deputy head of the Central Committee of Discipline Inspection’s team in the administration, said his team would look thoroughly into the matter to find out just who was responsible for going against the CCDI’s orders.

“We must investigate [to find out] where they went wrong, whether the operations departments had sought approval level after level, whether the draft had been approved by party officials, whether it had been reviewed before going online, and whether the system of review and publishing information had been followed,” Shi was quoted by CCTV as saying.

“We will nail the responsibility to a specific person, to the official in charge of the relevant department … We will investigate and seek responsibility for the inconsistency with the party’s opinions and the inspection team’s report.”

The administration had on January 26 published a report compiled in response to the CCDI instructions, which said it would no longer use medal rankings to determine major awards for the biggest “contributions” at the Olympics and the Asian Games. Medal tallies would also be abandoned for the National Games, an event held every four years.

It added that competition results would be just one of at least four other elements counted in assessments of each province’s sports sector. Other factors would include participation rates and overall progress at the local sporting level.

But just days later, the administration published rules for the 13th National Games and Winter National Games, which stipulated that each province’s results would still be publicised, contradicting its report.

Last week, the administration issued an apology for the inconsistency and clarified that provinces’ medal rankings and overall rankings would not be publicised.

It blamed “an error by working staff” for publishing the contradictory draft rules.

Original title by South China Morning Post:China’s top sports body to be probed for ‘conflicting rules’ over medal rankings