It comes the last day of swimming competition. It took all by surprise (including me) that Chinese team did so much better this time, a year that notorious Chinese National Games will be held in Shandong Province in a couple of months. Up to this point, Chinese team won 4 golds, 2 silvers and 3 bronze (9 overall) compared to 1 silver and 1 bronze in last edition and 1 gold, 3 silver and 2 bronze in Beijing. The new generation of Chinese swimmers really have no fear against the world best this time since they know they are up for the challenge and they did it.
After the wins, it is one of the typical moments the Western swimming society had doubts on the results. This time, they add one more thing: suit. There are a lot of communication problems between China and the rest of the world which may always make Chinese swimming remain a secret operation. Chinese media actually is in general poorly informative in swimming event especially after Chinese swimming no longer medal well in major competitions. Like Athletics, the whole athletics page in Chinese sports website is delidicated to Liu Xiang. They only chase and analyze a little more for those who can medal. They don't care enough. Without solid base of media in China dedicated to Chinese swimming, all my information in the domestic competitions is gathered from fragments of reports in the provincial or general sports websites in China. If this is so, how can the Western swimming fans or media know more about them. Unlikely. Everytime when they medal and one of the swimmers did well, they would say xxx coming out from no where or xxx last year is on (this time) and the time drop this year is xxx which is too dramatic to believe if it is true. One thing I noticed such a miscommunications is from swimnews.com who reported the girl who received the bronze medal on behalf of Gao Chang in women's 50m back is Zhu Qianwei and he sensed something fishy about this since he mentioned same situation happened in 1994. According to reports in China, Gao's absence was due to a slight delay in urine testing which the organizer could not wait for her to start the medal ceremony. Since China also won the 4x200m free relay and the medal ceremony was followed by the women's 50m back, the quartet from China was also waiting in the scene. Italian organizer just picked a random Chinese girl from the quartet and the "lucky girl" was Liu Jing (not Zhu as reported). After the ceremony, Gao Chang came back and joined the medalists. Furthermore, when the WRs were punched like a paper puncher after the introduction of suits like LZR, Craig Lord, a dedicated swimnews.com reporter had a lot of reports on how the all time lists have been affecting. One time, he listed out the women's 400m IM list and put a note next to Chen Yan and Wu Yanyan something like "positive in subsequent drug test". Poor Chen who may be mistaken for the other Chen Yan, once a top national backstroker in late 1990s from Jiangsu province and test positive for steriod in 1999. I pointed out to him by email and he insisted he is right so nothing I can do for the clarification. Her under-par performance after 1998 was mainly due to intensive training that caused her stomach problems and shoulder injuries. After 2000 Olympics, she rested totally without any competition and managed to put out some great performance at the end of 2001 in national Games. She chose to retire since she did not want to train under the national team which may worsen her conditions. One more thing on the confusion of the names is from swiminfo when there is a dedicated statistician who made a lot of errors in the performances from China in the all time list. Like Zhao Jing in backstroke, you also can find her early performance under different person's name like Jin Zhao. The other funny one is Xutian Longzi. This kind of "double surname " like "Xu+tian" is getting popular nowadays. In the list, they have Xu tianlongzi and Longzi Xutian. It is kinda funny but this is the barrier that it is hard to break between China and the Western world.
I think later more and more people will say things on Chen Huijia's 1:04 leg in 4x100 medley relay since she only swam 1:07.2 in semifinal of 100m breastroke finishing 12th. This is already her pb. Chen has already been in the domestic scene quite some time. She is a 1:09 swimmer since 2005 and improved to 1:08.13 last year winning the Olympic trial. She made it to the semi final. She also competed in world champ 2007 as well. She is always more like a sprinter since she normally comes out very fast in the 1st 50m swimming 31 low or 30 high but her endurance was not so impressive. Her pb in 200m breast was 2:30 before Roma world champ but she did a 2:26 in heats this time which I think it is a good sign for the endurance part. 2:26, is not quite good enough nowadays to make the last 16 but I saw it and think she is still in a pretty good shape after 100m. In the heats of medley relay, she did 1:05 which surprised me since before the race, I think the breaststroke and free will be wildcards for China and they are kinda unpredictable. What I mean is it could be weak compared to other top teams and it can be really competitive that at least they can hold off those stronger opponents. I cannot imagine Chen swam 1:04.12, the fastest split among all breastrokers. Last year, she did not make to the final of individual event so Chinese team picked the finalist, Sun Ye who did 1:07 split which was like 2-3 seconds behind the great Jones. This time, Chen really stepped up and recovered the loss of Luo Xuejuan, who retired prematurely due to her heart condition. It is noted that both Luo and Chen are in the same provincial team and they know how to produce fine breastrokers. I believe Chen already has 1:06 in her but with the suit, the improvement is doubled. For Chen, this swim could be one of the times and platform for her to gain more confidence in herself.
Probably, people will still think Chinese are cheaters on (1) drug issue: Scandals in 1994 and 1998 together with Wu Yanyan in 2000 and Ouyang Kunpeng in 2008 are still lingering deep down in the swimming world. I am with you and always be alert. Once caught, no matter swimmers from China or other countries, they normally denied using drugs deliberately (who would?) and may put out some typical explanations like misusing some kinds of flu medicine or supplements (Hardy's case) or having barbaque (for Ouyang's case and Zhou Jie's case in 2005) or even mis-drinking mineral water doped by their rivals or admirers. Who knows if they are saying the truth? I think it is a good thing to store the athletes' samples for later test once any new technique is invented. I think some of the Olympic medalists from last year were busted this way. Although international swimming society has seen the efforts from China on drug problem, the low level of infomation exchange due to language barrier (attributing to low circulation of translated swimming news from China) does no good to make their swimmers known to the world swimming. This situation will continue; (2) Suit issue: I think all swimmers who medalled are wearing technology-assisted suits. No matter it is LZR, hydrofoil, Arena X-glide and Jaked01, swimmers get the extra assistance and the difference is the extent the suit can help one swimmer. If it is so strict, all swimmers in the field are cheaters and non-cheaters (or suckers) are those who still wear fabric brief. No matter it is a swimming world or business world, people definitely would do something "legal" to get the edge over their opponents. It is more than normal. When there are people involved, it is hard to keep it innocent like a glass of pure water. The drug is one thing and the suit is the other. People may think Craig Lord is cynical but I think he is more like a watchdog trying to keep the pool from the impurities. I think it is a good thing. Probably, there will be other thing that puts the world swimming into the tornado again. Never knows.
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