Chinese swimming doesn't seem to have a lead

Having produced a heaps of world records in 1990s although most of them are suspicious to the Western world, China seems to come to a dilemma that they don't know how to improve their swimmers to survive fast-growing international swimming scene.

Recently, a few examples triggers these thoughts:
1. Qi Hui, former women's 200m breastroke world record holder (2:22.99 in 2002) had a really nightmare in just-wrapped-up world championships after she was trying a new training method: "living at altitudes, training at sea level" which has been claimed to use successfully in the West. Her coach, Ye Jin, tried this new method on her team including world champ representatives Qi, Qu Jingyu and Lai Zhongjian. Among them, Qi's response to the new method was the worst when she only managed to swim 2:19.05 in 200m IM heats while her pb came from last year 2:11.92 and she has constantly been swimming 2:13, 2:14 over the last 5 years. After that, she swam around 2:30 in the heats and semi final in her pet event, 200m breaststroke. Based on her form, this must have taken so much from her and makes me respect her a lot. Her last event was 400m IM when she was denied at the final gate at 4:49. Another salute from me. She showed her style and rich experience. Her teammate, Qu Jingyu did not benefit much from the new training as well. He was stopped at the heats of men's 50m breast and 200m IM. He is the national record holder in the latter event (2:00.59). Lai, on the other hand, improved pb in 100m breastroke to 1:02.18 (0.2s improvement) and made it to semifinal in 200m breaststroke. Lai is the NR holder in 200m (2:13.68). It seems to me her coach did not have any expected outcome in mind before she wanted to execute the training plan that is considered totally new to them. She might just think "let's try something new and let's go". I don't mean that Ye is not a good coach since she had taken Qi to conquer the world record once and she had produced so many top domestic swimmers like Qu, Lai and Zhao Tao. Over the years, their results are quite consistent. She can bring a swimmer to a certain level, but after she is running out of her ideas to improve her swimmers, she takes the risk to try something new that she didn't even know what is exactly going on. I think Qi's response to the method can be negated and adjusted if the early symptoms Qi had were discovered, diagnosed and rectified. I think they need to do more than enough research on the method before it applies to the swimmer. Do they ever think of how much damage it will cause on one's confidence. Qi, a 2-time Olympian, finishing fourth in 2000 and sixth in 2004 in 200m breaststroke. Being a former WR holder and medalists in 01 and 03 world champ, she has given so much into her swimming career which was dated back from 1998 Asian Games (winning silver behind Tanaka Masami in 200m breastroke at 2:28.71). After her form bounced back in late 2005 and set pb in 2006, a Olympic medal is what she desires for when gold medal might be impractical since Leisiol Jones and Katie Hoff are all so much ahead of her. I don't know how much impact it is going to plummet on her. You can change but change with good reasoning.

2. Zhang Lin, a rising male swimmer in long-distance freestyle has been a mutiple finalist in last 3 world championships. I still remember that in 2005 East Asian Games, current world 400m free champion, Park Tae Hwan, and Zhang had a fierce competition in 400m and 1500m free. In that competition, they both won 1 each in less than a arm distance. In 2006 Asian Games, they had 3 head-to-head competitions (200, 400 and 1500m), Park won all 3 and the gap seemed to be widening up. After 3 months later, both were racing in Melbourne. The gap becomes enormously huge. Park won bronze in 200m and gold in 400m while Zhang only managed to make it to 200m final although he managed to break his own national record. Park has become world top class swimmer but Zhang seems to refuse improvement. Here were their head-to-head competitions:
200m
Park vs Zhang
2005 world champ: 1:49.70 (20th in heat) vs 1:48.10 (7th in sf)
2006 Panpac: 1:47.51 (silver) vs 1:47.59 (bronze)
2006 Asian Games: 1:47.12 (gold) vs 1:47.85 (silver)
2007 world champ: 1:46.73 (bronze) vs 1:47.53 (6th)
Improvement (from 2005 to 2007)
Park: 2.97 seconds
Zhang: 0.57 seconds

400m
2005 world champ: 4:04.75 (42nd in heat) vs 3:51.88 (19th in heat)
2005 East Asian Games: 3:48.71 (gold) vs 3:48.94 (silver)
2006 Panpac: 3:45.72 (gold) vs 3:47.07 (silver)
2006 Asian Games: 3:48.44 (gold) vs 3:49.03 (silver)
2007 world champ: 3:44.30 (gold) vs 3:49.08 (11th)
Imrprovement (from 2005 to 2007):
Park: 4.41 seconds
Zhang: 1.87 seconds

1500m
2005 East Asian Games: 15:00.32 (silver) vs 15:00.27 (gold)
2006 Panpac: 15:06.11 (gold) vs --
2006 Asian Games: 14:55.03 (gold) vs 15:03.13 (silver)
2007 world champ: 15:03.62 (9th) vs 15:13.27 (18th)
Imrprovement (from 2005 to 2007):
Park: 5.29 seconds
Zhang: 0 seconds


Obviously, Park is leading ahead of Zhang when Park had time improvement series 2.97, 4.41 and 5.29 seconds in 3 events while Zhang only managed 0.57, 1.87 and 0 seconds. Now is May 2007, in 2 years and 5 months, the degree of improvement for Zhang was comparatively small. We might ask, they are both East Asian and China even has a stronger background in swimming. Why is the success in Park? Why is Zhang Lin stepping on the same ground or improving so little? It goes down to training again. Before World champ, the media had already disclosed Park was training in Australia as preparation for the world champ while Zhang was still following his coach, Chen Yinghong's training program to prepare the competition. The timer was cold but is definitely telling the truth. Zhang's ability in competition is improving based on his heats times but Park's advancement was just too overwhelming to him when he looks at Park as a main opponent in Asia. It proves that the training Park had received in Australia is effective, at least based on the results this time. Zhang also felt unease on Park's performance complaining about the training method he is following. Nevertheless, I would say there is a trememdous multidirectional improvement over the years on men's side. Take a look at the national record before 2000 and the record nowadays will tell the huge improvement in Chinese men's swimming.

Order: Before 2000, After 2000
100m fr: 50.51 (Shen Jianqiang) to 49.06 (Chen Zuo in 06) => 1.45 seconds
200m fr: 1:50.60 (Chen Zhou in 97) to 1:47.53 (Zhang in 07) => 3.07 seconds
400m fr: 3:54.78 (Jin Hao in 97) to 3:47.07 (Zhang in 06) => 7.71 seconds
1500m fr: 15.29.xx (Wang Dali) 15:00.27 (Zhang in 05) => more than 25 seconds
100m back: 56.04 (Lin Laijiu in 93) to 54.07 (Ouyang Kunpeng in 05) => 1.97 seconds
200m back: 1:58.72 (Fu Yong in 97) to 1:57.91 (Ouyang in 05) => 0.79 seconds
200m breaststroke: 2:14.56 (Wang Yiwu in 94) to 2:13.68 (Lai Zhongjian in 06) => 0.88 seconds
100m fly: 53.20 (Jiang Chengji in 96) to 52.70 (Zhou Jiawei in 05) => 0.5 second
200m fly: 1:59.07 (Xie Xufeng in 97) to 1:54.91 (Wu Peng in 06) => 4.16 seconds
200m IM: 2:02.36 (Wang Wei in 97) to 2:00.59 (Qu Jingyu in 05) => 1.87 seconds
400m IM: 4:19.03 (Xiong Guoming in 97) to 4:15.38 (Wu Peng in 02) => 3.65 seconds

Only 50m free (22.33 by Jiang Chengji) and 100m breaststroke (1:01.66 by Zeng Qiliang) were not broken after 2000. These times are quite competitive in the world now which has changed the past concept on Chinese swimming as "Strong women but weak men". However, from Zhang's case, training is still the cause of the problem.

3. New time schedule: In order to adapt to the Olympic program "morning final, evening heats", they started adopting a new training schedule: swimmers wake up at 5:30am and start training at 6am with no food intake. From 9-11:30am is nap time followed by lunch. Training starts again at 3pm and finishes at 6pm. Most of the swimmers cannot adapt to the schedule at once but start getting to used after a few weeks later. However, without a single grain in the stomach before jumping into the pool to start hard training seems unhealthy. Swimmers don't have their early breakfast take more-than-enough food after the morning training which makes them unable to have lunch. This also affects the nap quality. From some reports, swimmers also complained about not much food choice in the early morning since most of the available food sources are unavailable at this time and they all just feel sleepy but not really hungary. I really don't understand. All these situations are supposed to take into considerations. Like what kinds of responses may the swimmers have during the change? what can make the transition smoother? Never heard about these! Hope they can find a way of success in the remaining time heading to Olympics