China Cheating, Doping at Olympics?

WRONG RACE?

Coaches of defeated athletes have been complaining about cheating for at least 3,000 years. The recent howls of disbelief from the West when Ye Shiwen beat 'their' athletes are no exception, and no surprise. Here's a wonderful post from a wonderful source, Silicon Hutong. Pass it on:

Is Rebecca Adlington a drug cheat?

First of all – I apologise for the Daily Mail-esque linkbait title. This post has practically nothing to do with  Rebecca Adlington, who is definitely not a drug cheat. This post is about two teenage girls who have just won Olympic gold medals in London. The first is called Ye Shiwen. She is 16 years of age, Chinese, and she won a gold medal in the women’s 400m medley event, with a world record time of 4:28.43. Her performance seemed so incredible to the BBC’s Clare Balding that immediately after the race she asked her co-commentator, Mark Foster -

How many questions will there be, Mark, about somebody who can suddenly swim so much faster than she has ever swum before?

(link)

Soon after, the executive director of the World Swimming Coaches Association, John Leonard, came even closer to accusing Ye of being a drug cheat. He bravely begins this non-accusation by saying -

We want to be very careful about calling it doping

Not careful about suggesting a 16 year old girl is a drug cheat, you’ll notice. Just careful about the phrasing of the suggestion. Leonard then goes on:

The one thing I will say is that history in our sport will tell you that every time we see something, and I will put quotation marks around this, ‘unbelievable’, history shows us that it turns out later on there was doping involved. That last 100m was reminiscent of some old East German swimmers, for people who have been around a while. It was reminiscent of the 400m individual medley by ayoung Irish woman in Atlanta.

John Leonard not accusing Ye Shiwen of being a drug cheat, there. You saw how he definitely didn’t accuse her of being a drug cheat? Because he wants to be very careful about doing that, apparently.

Note how both Clare Balding and John Leonard are principally concerned about the improvement in Ye’s times. At this point, it might be worth stating exactly how much Ye’s times have improved. In the 2010 Asian games (when she was just 14 years of age), Ye posted a time of 4.33.79, a full five seconds slower than her record-breaking gold medal swim. She has improved her time since then by 1.95%. Also, a lot has been made of the fact that Ye swam the final 50m of her race in 28.93 seconds, which is faster than Ryan Lochte, the winner of the men’s 400m medley, who could only post 29.10 seconds for his final 50m.

On the face of it, those statistics do look quite damning, don’t they? But, if you recall, I said at the top of this post that this was a story about two girls, not one, and it’s now time to talk about the other amazing teenaged Olympic champion swimmer at these games. She’s a 15 year old Lithuanian called Ruta Meilutyte, and she won gold in the women’s 100m breaststroke last night. This was a popular result in the Aquatic Centre, because Meilutyte lives in Plymouth, and is trained by English coach Jon Rudd. No-one expected her to make the final in London (never mind win a medal) because only a year ago, she set a new national record of 1:07.96, which would barely have got her into the semifinals in London. However, she won her semifinal in a time of 1:05.21 (a European record), and then went on to take gold in the final. Her win came as a massive shock, and was greeted rapturously by Clare Balding, who described it as “her favourite non-British story of the Games so far”. To the best of my knowledge John Leonard has yet to comment.

I want to be clear about this – I am not accussing Ryta Meilutyte of doping. I think she’s a phenomenal athlete, and I was as happy as anyone to see her win, and laughed like a drain at her brilliant post-race interview. But Ruta Meilutyte has improved her times by four percent in the last year. Ye Shiwen improved her times by two percent in the last two years. And yet, if I google “Ruta Meilutyte doping”, every first page result links to a news piece that talks about Ruta winning, and Ye doping.

What did Clare Balding ask, again?

How many questions will there be, Mark, about somebody who can suddenly swim so much faster than she has ever swum before?

Well, it seems that answer depends almost entirely on race. If you’re white, if you have an English trainer, then everyone’s going to be delighted for you. If you’re Chinese, you’re going to face a barrage of cowardly smears and insinuations that will ruin the greatest day of your life. Hurrah for the Olympics! Read the whole thing...